The answer's TV. What's the question? I don't believe there was ever an era when such an attitude prevailed, but if there was, it is there no longer.

Certainly, no one at Thinkbox thinks like that, even though we believe - and can prove - that TV makes all campaigns more effective and is increasingly versatile. TV has to earn its place within a marketing communications plan and brands have many alternatives to consider. This is what makes the Thinkbox TV Planning Awards so important - nothing can be taken for granted.

We were delighted to receive so many great entries in our inaugural year as sponsor - excellent examples of how today's TV can be used to deliver a range of objectives and how expanding formats and commercial opportunities are giving brands multiple reasons to put TV at the heart of their campaigns.

There were a few frustrating entries where we knew the planning and execution had delivered, but where the entry itself failed to make the case. Brows became furrowed by confusing and idiosyncratic language. What exactly is "an interactive, digital event-led strategy" TV pods at outdoor gigs, or red-button ads in Lost?

We have clearly abused the word "digital" for too long when media planners reveal they think that TV will only be delivered via the internet after digital switchover.

The most successful entries addressed the brand's strategic objectives convincingly, while creatively exploiting the depth and richness of all that TV can offer. They proved that close collaboration between strategic planners and implementational planner/buyers is crucial, not just for writing awards entries but for delivering sensational results for advertisers.

The best entries also convinced us that they understood effectiveness, avoided over-claiming and were aware of how TV's contribution ranked alongside the brand's total marketing activity.

I'd like to thank all our gorgeous jurors who put in so much time and effort. They took their responsibilities very seriously, but always entertainingly - it is telly after all. Thank you to Media Week and Campaign for all their support and to the lovely Thinkboxers who worked so hard to make the awards happen. And, of course, big thanks to everyone who took the time and trouble to enter - more tellies to be won next year.

Chairman of the judges
Tess Alps

Media Week is delighted to be associated with the Thinkbox TV Planning Awards, and welcome to this, our annual celebration of all that's best in TV planning and TV advertising.

The quality of entries this year was excellent, with many fine pieces of work submitted.

As with any set of awards, the success or failure of an entry often comes down to the way it is presented. The judges suspected that some of the entries had been written by account handlers rather than the media planners who actually came up with the strategies. This meant that some potentially excellent entrants didn't manage to properly convey the effectiveness of their case.

But one entry that definitely did stand out was Domino's. It won the overall Grand Prix award due to its longevity and fantastic commitment to television as an advertising medium. It made a huge investment in its relationship with The Simpsons 10 years ago, and it is sometimes forgotten what a risk this was at the time, so established and successful has the relationship become.

The awards spanned established work such as Domino's through to innovative new developments in TV. There are a lot of interesting new technological developments in television, but sometimes advertising isn't keeping up with the technology. For example, broadcasters have to use workarounds to run HD advertising, actually stitching them into the programming because their servers are not yet capable of running HD transmissions, and there's still not enough demand out there from clients. The tipping point is obviously still around the corner in this case and the current scale means it is not yet economically viable to run many HD ads. However, it was good to reward Ford for taking the plunge into HD with its Mondeo campaign and it will be interesting to see how HD advertising on TV develops over the next 12 months.

There was plenty more top TV planning to get excited about, details of which follow on these pages.

I would like to thank Thinkbox for supporting these TV planning awards, the judges who gave up their valuable time to assess the entries, and all those who took the time to enter their best work into the awards.

Congratulations to the winners, and better luck next year to those who just missed out this time.

Editor of Media Week
Steve Barrett