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Colenso wins Grande Orca for K9FM, follows it up with Black Pencil at D&AD

Yesterday, at the Radio Rewired conference hosted in Auckland, the industry announced that Colenso BBDO’s ‘K9FM’ campaign for Pedigree had won the Grande Orca for 2015.

The Grande Orca is handed out every year to the single best radio ad produced over the course of the year. The judges choose their favourite from the collection of 12 finalists that are chosen on a monthly basis over the course of the year. 

This year’s winner, picked up the monthly Orca in June last year and has also won a range of awards on the international awards circuit, including a silver gong at Cannes.  

Running since April last year, K9FM that gives dogs a dedicated radio station that they can listen to at home while their owners are out working. It stems from research that found that classical music calms dogs down, ambient sounds keep them stimulated and a relaxed voice eases their separation anxiety. K9FM provides dogs with everything from virtual days out (recordings of sounds from a beach, park etc) to dog stories to interviews with experts about frisbees.

“The idea for the campaign was from a few dog owners in the agency, leaving the radio on for dogs all day,” said Colenso BBDO copywriter Oriel Davis in June. “There’s research that proves dogs find it relaxing – that is, music and the sound of a human voice. The problem with a lot of radio is it’s either one or the other. So we put it together, it was fun to make the content. Then we approached Pedigree with it, who was already a client of ours.”

Davis and the rest of the creative team (himself, Matt Lawson, Levi Slavin, and Beth O’Brien) wrotes, recorded and updated segments regularly to ensure that the station played for 24 hours a day, ensuring that the dogs were always stimulated in the absence of human interaction. 

This win means the Davis and O’Brien have won a trip to Cannes as well as a $50,000 rate card to use on radio advertising for the client.

And the creative team at Colenso received additional good news overnight in that the campaign has also picked up one of only five coveted black pencils awarded at the D&AD Awards (it also won a yellow pencil).   

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