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The good, the bad and the ugly of advertising: Wilson and Big Save take Fair Go Ad Award cakes

Marcomms folk chatted, the huddled masses voted, a fair amount of live broadcast awkwardness ensued at Tyler St Garage and common sense eventually prevailed at the always extremely popular Fair Go Ad Awards, with DDB, Lotto and The Sweet Shop’s ‘Lucky Dog’ epic taking out Best Ad and ‘Kerrrazeee Lily Salter’ from Big Save Furniture fronting up to accept Worst Ad honours. 

Youtube VideoWith 60 percent of the fairly pricey 99 cent txt votes, DDB and NZ Lotteries beat out Droga5 and ASB’s Mint Sauce (23 percent), its own Sky ‘Match Fit’ campaign (11 percent) and DraftFCB and Pak ‘n Save’s ‘Stickman’ (5 percent).

Youtube VideoBig Save, with a father/daughter management team that, not surprisingly, write their own ads, also had 60 percent of the vote on the other side of the equation, beating ‘Match Fit’ (20 percent), Sky’s Happy Place (10 percent) and ASB’s IVF ad (9 percent). And, while a shouty, lowest common denominator offering like this is unlikely to win any Effie accolades, the smack them over the head approach is a model that obviously still works, because Salter—who, unlike some, took the award in the spirit it was intended—said it’s been an amazing year for the furniture chain.

“We are so stoked. We work terribly hard to be New Zealand’s best value furniture retailer. And it’s just awesome to finally be nationally recognised,” she said rather excitedly—and slightly perplexingly—given she had just received the worst ad award.

Like last year with Tower’s ‘Brian and Lisa—Poochi’ from AIM Proximity and the year before with Cadbury Eyebrows, Match Fit achieved that notable advertising feat of being in both the best and worst ad categories. But what Sky’s brilliant ‘Happy Place’ ad was doing in the worst ad section is a mystery that will forever remain unsolved, much like the Ad Awards’ nomination policy, it seems.

There were the requisite cheesy skits from the Fair Go team ripping off their favourite ads, the student ad awards (with the most entertaining moment coming from Lime Hills School featuring a block of cheese coming out a cow’s bum) and, taking a leaf out of Australia’s The Gruen Transfer, Fair Go’s first ever live pitch, which pitted Chris Schofield and Billy McQueen against Josh Lancaster and Jamie Hitchcock to create a campaign that would get Quade Cooper into office (head to 5.30 for the results).

Toyota ‘Believe’ and Harvey Norman took out the best and worst ad awards last year. And, as far as ratings go, last night’s episode drew an average audience of 610,500 (all people 5+) and had channel share of 35.6.

This was down on last year’s average audience of 734,460 viewers, which TVNZ said was about 200,000 more than its regular ratings, but about the same as the past four years.

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