Every year, the Promax Awards celebrate the standout promotional efforts from broadcasters across the world. And at this year’s ANZ edition, which occurred last Saturday, TVNZ Blacksand enjoyed a particularly fruitful evening, picking up an impressive tally of gongs across a range of categories.
TVNZ’s in-house creative team won a total of ten golds and two silver awards, with Duke and Shortland Street coming out as the biggest winners of the night.
Gold Awards:
1. Best drama campaign – Shortland Street – ‘The Living Moment’
2. Best drama promo – Shortland Street – ‘The Living Moment’
3. Best use of digital – Shortland Street – ‘Winter Season’
4. Best integrated marketing campaign for a channel – Duke
5. Best outdoor – Filthy Rich – ‘What would you do?’
6. Best direct response promo – ‘Pizza Hut TV2 Movie Night’
7. Best on-air branding (in-house) – Duke
8. Best on-air indent design – Duke
9. Best original logo – Duke
10. Best channel identity – Duke
Silver Awards:
1. Best sports campaign – Paralympics – ‘Built Different’
2. Best use of digital – Mastermind – ‘NZ Game’
The evening was particularly successful for TVNZ newcomer TVNZ Duke, which picked up an impressive haul of five awards, including a coveted gold for best channel identity.
Adam Sarkar, the creative director on the TVNZ Duke campaign, says winning these awards was incredibly rewarding, given how quickly the Duke brand had to be turned around.
“The Duke brand was a huge effort from the whole team,” Sarkar says. “Having gone from brief to the channel being on-air in three months, we’re really pleased that the stellar work the Blacksand team produced has been recognised as some of the best this year both here and overseas.”
TVNZ Blacksand executive creative director Jens Hertzum attended the event and says he’s particularly happy about how varied the wins were over the course of the evening.
“What I am most proud of is that TVNZ Blacksand won across a suite of categories that reflect our multi-disciplined approach,” Hertzum says. “We are a team who create, produce and deliver with expertise across platforms for our channels, content and clients alike.”
This is in line with comments recently made by TVNZ chief executive Kevin Kenrick, who pointed out that the Blacksand team consistently extends beyond the usual remit of what is conventionally expected of a promos team.
“Anyone can edit a few scenes, cut it together and throw a bit of music behind it, but what [Jens] has been encouraging teams to do is look for a creative idea that can be brought to life,” Kenrick said.
The TVNZ boss pointed to the example TVNZ Blacksand’s work on Shortland Street as an example of kind of work the creative team is increasingly encouraged to do.
More than simply a reel of cinematic highlights, these campaigns often offer an integrated experience for fans.
Last year’s ‘Living Moment’ campaign was a clear example of this, giving viewers a series of clues to determine who wouldn’t make it through the season-ending cliff-hanger.
It’s also worth noting that TVNZ Blacksand is increasingly working directly with clients, which was also reflected at the awards show in the shape of the Pizza Hut campaign, which won in the direct response category.
“TVNZ created a really exciting and creative promotion linking to the core of our brand belief that pizza night should be fun,” says Pizza Hut marketing manager Brenda Galbraith. “Consumers were really engaged with the activation through our movies sponsorship and it felt like they were having a picnic in the lounge. Even better, it delivered a great commercial return for Pizza Hut.”
Sky joins the party
While TVNZ was certainly the big winner on the night, it wasn’t the only local representative to walk away with some glory.
Sky TV also enjoyed a relatively good evening, picking up two golds and two silvers.
Sky’s wins came in the ‘Best movie promo,’ ‘Best promo using only program footage’ and the ‘Best Script or copy’ categories.
MediaWorks did not convert any of its entries into silverware.
See all the winners here:
