GraceKennedy–au­tho­rised rep­re­sen­ta­tive for West­ern Union, Bill Ex­press and Fx Trad­er–com­mem­o­rat­ed 16 years of op­er­a­tions this No­vem­ber with a very spe­cial gift, six of the top awards in the T&T ad­ver­tis­ing in­dus­try cour­tesy of their agency, Lons­dale Saatchi & Saatchi. The com­pa­ny, cel­e­brat­ing the 16th an­niver­sary in grand style at the ball­room of the Crowne Plaza ho­tel on No­vem­ber 2, com­menced op­er­a­tions in T&T in 1992 and has ex­pand­ed to an ever grow­ing net­work that stands cur­rent­ly at 58 lo­ca­tions. Act­ing coun­try man­ag­er for GraceKennedy (Trinidad & To­ba­go), Ronald Thomp­son, point­ed to the com­pa­ny's fo­cus on cus­tomer ser­vice as vi­tal to its suc­cess.

"The sin­gle thing which will en­sure our con­tin­ued suc­cess in this busi­ness is ex­cel­lent cus­tomer ser­vice–that spe­cial re­la­tion­ship we fos­ter with our con­sumers." Lons­dale's West­ern Union cam­paign, cre­at­ed on be­half of GraceKennedy, was a huge suc­cess at the As­so­ci­a­tion of Ad­ver­tis­ing Agen­cies of T&T (AAATT) awards, dom­i­nat­ing the fi­nan­cial ser­vices cat­e­go­ry and claim­ing the most cov­et­ed "Best of the Best In­te­grat­ed Cam­paign" tro­phy.

The West­ern Union cam­paign, "It Mat­ters," con­tributed to the 33 awards that made up Lons­dale's com­mand­ing to­tal, giv­ing them more than any oth­er agency on the night.

GraceKennedy did some award-giv­ing of its own, recog­nis­ing ex­cel­lence in ser­vice from its part­ner firms and their out­stand­ing cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Naipaul's Xtra Foods, Ex­cel­lent Stores and Econ­o­my Su­per­mar­ket were judged over­all win­ners, with Naipaul's al­so tak­ing first place in large and medi­um-sized cat­e­gories. Dol­lar Val­ue in Gas­par­il­lo won first place in the small cat­e­go­ry. Awards for ex­cel­lent cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tives were in two cat­e­gories. The first went to, Kerene Lopez of Econ­o­my Su­per­mar­ket for the West­ern Union and Bill Ex­press Cat­e­go­ry. The sec­ond cat­e­go­ry –West­ern Union, FX Trad­er and Bill Ex­press –was won by Sabi­ta Per­sad of Naipaul's in Ch­agua­nas.