DraftFCB’s had an impressive run on the awards circuit this year, winning plenty of metal at D&AD, Clio, New York Festivals, Axis and a few others. And it’s added to the cabinet after Kelly Lovelock and Hywel James were awarded the Grande ORCA for their cunning Prime TV ‘Call Girl’ promotion.
The pair walked away with the Martin Horspool Grande ORCA trophy, a $50,000 (ratecard) radio campaign for their client and a trip for them both to the Cannes Lions, all courtesy of The Radio Bureau.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eplTCkxqrGU
As it says on the DraftFCB website:
Prime Television wanted a national radio campaign to promote the launch of the new season premiere of the hit TV show, Secret Diary of a Call Girl. However, because this was now the fifth season of the show, we needed to do something very different to capture the audience’s attention. For three successive days, we had an ‘actress’ engage in call girl-like behaviour in a house opposite a top radio station. The ‘activities’ were seen through the house’s window that was clearly visible to the station’s studio and the DJs wasted no time in broadcasting their observations to the nation. On the final night, with public interest at its peak, we revealed the true story… plus the date and time of the new Prime show. Not only did DJs nationwide pick up on the story and unwittingly create for us a free 72hr radio ad, but we captured the furtive imaginations of countless listeners and generated thousands of Tweets and Facebook posts, helping to make the premiere of Secret Diary of a Call Girl the most talked about premiere of the year.
When it won the monthly award, TRB sent through a clarification: “More FM’s Network PD, Ande Macpherson worked closely with DraftFCB to set-up the Drive Show presenters, ensuring they were completely taken in. And they were, sharing the activities of their naughty neighbour on-air and online with the story quickly going viral here and abroad. Secrecy was so vital to the success of this promotion, that even sales teams were kept in the dark, with Ande ensuring that billing and booking were left until after the prank had taken place.”
And DraftFCB’s Angela Spain says: “Just so you know, the only people that were in on the prank were the station manager and the producer of the drive show. Everyone else at MediaWorks, especially the DJs, were unaware of the prank. The prank then created 72 hours of “talk”. So not all of them were duped.”
Judges—WhybinTBWA’s Toby Talbot, Ogilvy’s Angus Hennah, Assignment’s Josh Lancaster and Jamie Hitchcock, DraftFCB’s James Mok and Clemenger Adelaide’s Karl Fleet—commented that it was “Quite simply brilliant!”, “Excellent use of the medium” “A winner” in every respect and “loved it” for being “inventive and risqué” (all Judges abstained from marking any entries that were their own agency’s work, or which might have constituted a conflict of interest).
Last year’s Grande ORCA winners, Y&R’s Jack Delmonte and Hadleigh Sinclair didn’t go away empty handed either. Along with Guy Denniston, they took the People’s Choice award for their Subway ‘Italiania Downunder’ campaign (entered during their Publicis Mojo days) and walked away with $2,000 and a brand new Martin Horspool trophy.
This year’s Grande ORCAs were just one of the radio industry events taking place as part of Radio Week 2013, which culminated in Thursday night’s Radio Awards.
