A ‘cut-out’ style newspaper ad designed to highlight the resale value of Volkswagen cars has been crowned NNI Press Ad of the Year for 2012. The winning ad, which was created by Owens DDB, with media planned by MediaCom, was announced at a special awards ceremony in the Mansion House last night.

This year’s NNI awards were judged by Mark Lewis and Matt Fitch of BBH (London), the creative duo behind theGuardian newspaper’s multi-award-winning ‘Three Little Pigs’ ad, along with Gavin O’Doherty, Marketing Director of Irish Distillers Pernod Ricard, and Today FM Chief Executive, Peter McPartlin. Last night’s awards ceremony was hosted bySunday Independent columnist and TV presenter Brendan O’Connor.

In addition to winning the overall NNI Press Ad of the Year award, Owens DDB’s ‘VW Resale Value’ also won prizes for Best Art Direction and Best Consumer Durables Ad. The agency  picked up a further award in the NNI Best Local & Regional category for its ‘Cowboy’ ad on behalf of Skoda.

The overall winning ad was described as “right up there with the classic VW print ads” by judges Mark Lewis and Matt Fitch of BBH London, who recommended that the work be entered in this year’s Cannes advertising festival.

“This is a purely newspaper ad that wouldn’t work in any other medium,” said judges Lewis and Fitch. “It’s really simple but it works on multiple levels. At the end of the day it’s a joke, but it succeeds in getting across a very serious point about the re-sale value of your car.

“The agency could have turned this into an instruction manual but they didn’t – and the results are very smart,” said the judges. “We’d love to have done this ad and if we had, we would definitely be entering it in Cannes; it’s really that good.”