BOSTON -- A low-budget television advertisement for a Boston radio station has won the top prize from the New England advertising community's Hatch Awards.
Emerson Lane Fortuna, a young Boston ad agency with annual billings of $20 million, won Best of Show at The Hatch Awards Tuesday for its white-on-black commercial for WMJX-FM.
The commercial plays songs in the background and uses words on a black screen to tell a sentimental story related to the soft rock music the radio station specializes in -- like a new father hearing Stevie Wonder's 'Isn't She Lovely' while celebrating the arrival of his new daughter in a bar.
'The writing and the timing were beautiful. They conveyed a message, tugged on the heart strings, made you chuckle without feeling you'd been had,' said Hatch judge Pam Conboy, art director at the Martin Williams agency in Minneapolis.
For the second consecutive year, the top agency at the awards show was Hill Holiday Connors Cosmopulos, which received 34 of Hatch's silver-plated Revere bowls.
The second-best performer, with 19 awards, was Leonard Monahan Saaybe of Providence.
