There’s never been a better time to be a marketer. We’ve got access to tools our forebears would hardly believe, levels of data that allow for finer and finer resolution, while every day exciting new ways to connect with our audiences are devised.
The industry will this week again be raising a glass to the most effective advertising in the country at the Effie Awards. But this year, the event takes place in slightly more inhospitable conditions, with many questioning what marketing success even means anymore. Is it about ROI? Is it about long-term or short-term results? And if it is about long-term results, then why do we have awards events every year. This year’s international judge Chris Baker answers the big questions swirling around the Effies.
A panel of 150 judges scrutinised the entries and selected just under 100 finalists across 17 categories for this year’s edition of the Effie Awards.
Ad industry award nights are, by their very nature, self-congratulatory. But CAANZ has added a charitable element to tonight’s Effie celebrations, with two Vespas featuring designs from Dick Frizzell and Trelise Cooper going up for auction to raise funds for Breast Cancer Cure. So whether you want a more stylish commute, or you feel the need to increase the cool factor in your agency office with a piece of mechanical art, the bids will be for a good cause.
The Effies Worldwide Index was released last week and, after tallying up the points earned through finalists and winners in the local Effie awards shows, FCB New Zealand and Colenso BBDO were ranked fifth and eighth respectively in the individual agency rankings, with Barnes Catmur fifth in the independent agency rankings. PLUS: all the Kiwi wins from the Asia Pacific Effies.
As the gongs from the recent Cannes award nights get cleaned of their champagne and finally take their place in agency and client boardrooms across the country and a new round of New Zealand awards begins, Mark Pickering offers some tips on putting together an award-winning experiential entry. PLUS: three of his favourite experiential campaigns.
Just a few weeks after being named agency of the year at Axis, Colenso BBDO has picked up another agency of the year accolade, this time at the inaugural Asia Pacific Effie Awards.
This new year we’ve again gathered together a family of campaigns that represent something of a high water mark of achievement in our industry. To be judged Gold at Cannes and then Gold at the Effies is evidence of an advertising idea that is beyond reproach, both in terms of the commercial or behavioural impact it creates for its client and the way it moves our industry forward through sheer imagination and innovation. And in 2013, 12 campaigns achieved this remarkable distinction.
DDB and DraftFCB continued their winning ways at the Effie Awards last night, with DDB holding on to the most effective agency crown and DraftFCB taking the supreme Effie for its work on the Health Promotion Agency’s depression initiative.
The 2013 Global Effie Effectiveness Index has just been released, with Colenso BBDO maintaining its position as the fifth most effective agency in the world based on 2012’s award haul and Barnes, Catmur & Friends punching well above its weight to be recognised as the fifth best independent agency in the world and the leading independent agency in the Asia Pacific.
After last year’s Axis Awards, shit hit fans when two of the country’s best campaigns—NZTA’s Ghost Chips and Steinlager’s ‘We Believe’—were largely snubbed. Since then, CAANZ, the CAANZ board and a collection of the country’s executive creative directors have been working together to make sure it doesn’t happen again. And a few important changes were announced at an event last night at The Bluestone Room in Auckland.
As a guest contributor for The Gunn Report, Y&R NZ’s managing director James Hurman looked for the campaigns that had hit the ‘high water mark of human achievement in creative communications’ by winning both Cannes and Effie golds. And just nine campaigns joined this exclusive club in 2012.
DDB, Barnes, Catmur & Friends, 2degrees, Clemenger and Colenso all walked away from the Langham last Thursday with varying degrees of Effie-inspired joy in their hearts. You can check out all the winners here. And, thanks to CAANZ and Richard Leonard, those more interested in the humans who attended can check out a few pics below.
After being denied at Axis, Steinlager’s ‘We Believe’ campaign rightly dominated last night with the grand Effie, and, with awards for Yellow Toolbox and more glory for Volkswagen after it won the supreme award at the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards, DDB made it a double by taking the crown as the year’s most effective agency.
For all you effectiveness sponges out there, Red Spider Network’s Charlie Robertson, a world leading strategic planner in brand strategy and communications and the international guest judge for this year’s Effie Awards, will be spreading the good word tomorrow night at at a function hosted by CAANZ, TVNZ and AUT Business School.
As the bean counters might say, if advertising doesn’t improve the bottom line, it’s really just art. And expensive art at that. And the agencies that improved their clients’ businesses the most this year have been announced, with perennial Effie performers Colenso BBDO and DraftFCB on top with 22 and 16 finalists respectively, followed by the bolter Barnes, Catmur & Friends on ten and DDB on nine.
The call for entries for the 2012 CAANZ Media Awards, which was led by DDB’s Chris Hancock and Chris Schofield, went out today, with a theme that tongue-and-cheekily references the Mayan doomsday prophesy. And while we all wonder about the future of mankind, CAANZ has taken the opportunity to announce a host of changes to the Media and the other awards it runs.
M&C Saatchi has had a good couple of years since snaffling three of AIM Proximity’s big dawgs. It won a host of new accounts last year, it recently added Orcon to the stable and it’s released some stellar work for the Police and Fire Service this year. Here’s what executive creative director Dave King made of 2011.
He’s released his first book, he’s chaired the Effies and he’s chewed people’s ears off at Christmas parties all around town about the importance of creativity in business. And now Colenso BBDO’s planning director James Hurman has his say on 2011.
Advertising agencies rarely advertise. But do we detect something of a trend? DDB put out a one-off ad to celebrate what would have been the 100th birthday of one of its founders a while back, and M&C Saatchi attempted to clear up some confusion in the marketplace after ‘Pink fist-gate’. But DrafFCB takes the title of best self-promoter after sponsoring Mad Men on Prime and using some of its clients’ ads to show off a bit. Now, after a fantastic performance at this year’s Effies, it’s doing a bit more shouting with an entertaining, rugby-related full page ad that featured in the Business Herald on Friday.
As MC Alison Mau said at the Effies last week, those attending advertising events are always the best dressed *awww shucks*. And, as you can see from the glamour shots below, the gladrags were dusted off once more as revellers gazed in awe at the winners on Thursday night at Sky City. If these don’t satisfy your insatiable desire for event photos, you can also check out the best dressed award contenders here and some afterparty photobooth action shots here.[nggallery id=14]
The Effie finalists are out and Colenso has backed up last year’s most effective agency mantle with 16 nominations, followed by DDB and DraftFCB with 14, .99 with ten and Special Group with eight. And, as for the clients, Air New Zealand, Frucor, 2degrees, NZ Lotteries, ANZ, ALAC, Fuji Xerox, the Electricity Authority, Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind and DB were among the most nominated across the 15 categories.
Australia’s third annual Effie Awards were announced yesterday in Sydney, with Happy Soldiers taking out The Grand Effie for its Tontine ‘use-by’ pillow campaign and Clemenger BBDO Melbourne taking out The Effective Agency of the Year.
… a dynamic duo is announced for Effie duties, TVNZ’s Breakfast gets its new co-hosts, adstream NZ increases its staff arsenal, MediaWorks says goodbye to some long-serving news staffers and Robyn Janes opens a production outfit in Hokitika. This is the last edition of Movings/Shakings of 2010. There, there, don’t cry. We’ll be back next year and we promise to quench your nigh-on insatiable thirst for employment scandals, unexpected departures, dastardly poachings, new postings (all of which will be written in capital letters to show their importance) and various industry accolades.
This year’s Effies tagline was ‘the best ad for advertising’. And it was certainly a pretty good advertisement for Colenso BBDO, which won 12 awards and became the only agency to ever win Most Effective Agency of the Year two years in a row, as well as the only agency to win Most Effective Agency of the Year and Best in Show in the same year. It was a close run thing, however, with DraftFCB nipping effectively at its heels with nine.
The industry is gearing up for its Effie fest on Thursday night. And for those lucky/immensely talented enough to have made it through to the finals, as well as all the other tag alongs present for the festivities, there are plenty of extra-curricular activities on offer from the event sponsors, including the official post-awards shindig that’s being put on by The Radio Bureau (TRB) and New Zealand Post Targeted Communications’ slightly mysterious mobile-phone related tomfoolery.
Get your read on with a host of entrancing tales about new RWC sponsorships, BIG moves, renaissance buses, the power of cinema, Pauline Hanton, photography, cool new campaigns, the Effies, online pre-research shopping tools, MINI art, sustainable business accolades, rock paper, the branding success of the Smokefree Rockquest and so much more.
The EFFIEs aren’t usually seen as the most glamorous or creative of the CAANZ events (as evidenced by the historic victory of Farmer’s Red Dot Specials a few years back). But, in terms of what advertising is actually meant to do, it should really be deemed the most important. And Colenso BBDO, DraftFCB and Barnes, Catmur & Friends have come through the first two rounds of judging as the country’s three most effective agencies for 2010.
So many things to read about, see, enter and attend, so little time.
Entries for the 2010 EFFIES are now open. And categories A through P might just have your name on them.