Association des Agences de Communication Créative (A2C) awarded the second edition of the Idéa Awards at a virtual ceremony Wednesday night.

Cossette stood tall at the end of the night, winning the Grand Prix in two of the five award categories.

The first came in the Business Results and Strategy category for “Long Live Little Brats,” a fundriasing campaign for the Montreal Children’s Hospital based around the idea that the return of a child’s endless and occasionally destructive energy after treatment was often seen as a blessing by parents.

Cossette’s second Grand Prix, in the Craft category, was shared with Montreal design studio Colagene for the latest edition of the “Écrire, ça libère” (“Write For Your Rights”) campaign for Amnesty International. With recognition also going to Cossette ACD Alexandre Jutras and Colagene illustrator Owen Gent, the campaign took the tip of pencil used in the non-profit’s annual letter writing campaign and turned it into a megaphone that amplified the voices of journalists, activists and people who have been wrongfully imprisoned.

Lg2 took the top prize in the Advertising category for “Ben oui, on a tout fait ça!” (“Yes, we did it all!”) for Maxi, which had the discount grocer embark on a year’s worth of off-beat ideas, sourced from a pool of more than 11,000 ideas from a Quebec-wide brainstorming session.

In addition to its Grand Prix, Lg2 also won the most Gold at Idea with 17 for clients including the SAAQ, Hilo, Pony, the Quebec Dairy Farmers and the 19 businesses involved in the “On se serre les coudes” campaign. Cossette had the second-most Golds with 10, followed by Rethink (5) and Sid Lee (4).

In Design, Wedge took the top prize for its work on the package design for Aupale Vodka (pictured, left), which used glass-making techniques to create the impression of a glacier.

Rounding out the Grand Prix winners was Montreal digital agency Locomotive. For SOS violence conjugale, a Quebec domestic violence non-profit, the agency created “It’s (Not) Violent,” a campaign that aimed to show all the non-physical forms domestic violence takes. A key element was the website, which simulated text conversations with a manipulative partner whose abuse took the form of being overly controlling over their partner, not respecting their privacy and being overly sexually aggressive, with no way to avoid their behaviour.

The full list of Gold winners can be found on the Idéa Awards website.

This is the second year of the Idea awards, having been created created by the A2C after combining five previously separate awards programs – Crea (advertising), Boomerang (digital and technology), Strat (business effectiveness and strategy), Grafika (design) and Prix Media (media) – all of which remain reflected in Idea’s categories.