NZME was the most successful New Zealand brand at the News Media Awards in Sydney last week, with News Corp topping the honours with The Weekend Australian taking home the 2018 News Brand of the Year.
This year’s awards were a new-look ceremony combining the former PANPA Newspaper of the Year Awards with the Advertising and Marketing Awards. The gala dinner was held at the Hilton, Sydney on 14 September.
More than 500 entries were submitted to the awards this year, by news media publishers from throughout Australia and New Zealand as well as Asia and the Pacific.
NZME’s bounty of eight awards included the prestigious Daily News Brand of the Year award for The New Zealand Herald. Other honours included the Best Execution of Integrated Advertising for a Client award for the ‘This is Where: Brand USA’ campaign; the digital component ‘Click and Play’ also won Best Execution of Digital Advertising for a Client award.
The trade team took home the award for Best Trade Marketing Campaign for the ‘Audiences Captured’ campaign; as well as the Best Consumer Campaign for the ‘Discover More: the relaunch of nzherald.co.nz’.
NZME teams won Best Subscriber Acquisition Campaign for ‘The Creative DM Design Challenge’ and the award for Best Execution of Print Advertising for a Client went to NZME for their work with ‘Westpac Women in Leadership.’ The Breast Foundation worked with NZME and Colenso on ‘The Survivors Collection’ campaign which was awarded Best Execution of Native Advertising for a Client.
NZME chief executive Michael Boggs says the awards were recognition of not only the company’s journalism but also its marketing and creative teams.
“I would also like to acknowledge our clients who have trusted us with their brands, bringing their campaigns to life across our multi-platform, audience-focused business.”
Stuff turned its 12 nominations into two wins, with Stuff Circuit’s ‘The Valley’ winning the Best Use of Mobile award, and photographer Christel Yardley winning the Portrait, Feature of Lifestyle Photography – Community award for her ‘Community left shattered’ work. Yardley’s winning photo was from the Stuff series on Huntly.
With the lion’s share of nominations, News Corp Media also took out the most awards with 13 wins on the night. As well as News Brand of the Year, News Corp won Community News Brand of the Year (The Gympie Times), Regional News Brand of the Year (NT News) and Weekend News Brand of the Year (The Weekend Australian).
Fairfax Media Australia – of which Stuff is a subsidiary company – took home nine of the awards on the night.
Fiji Times editor-in-chief Fred Wesley won news media executive of the year – the only award that went to a Pacific Island media group at the 2018 awards.
See the full list of winners here.
