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‘The Journal’ wipes floor at RSVP and Nexus awards

It felt wrong to be celebrating anything on Friday night, let alone excellence in response-driven marketing, but DraftFCB and The Ministry of Health’s ‘The Journal‘ campaign absolutely dominated the RSVP and Nexus awards, taking home the RSVP Grand Prix and the Nexus Supreme Awards—the first time this has been achieved in the 23 year history of the awards—and eight other golds. The Journal saw a major step-change in the social marketing space by mentoring people with depression in an entirely online environment, creating an end-to-end pathway for people to find a way through depression with personalised support and access to medical expertise when required.

Since its inception in 2006, the National Depression Initiative’s advertising campaign has had a marked impact on New Zealanders’ attitudes towards the illness. And while this has translated to a steady increase in access to services such as GPs and the depression helpline, one in seven New Zealanders will experience depression at some point in their lives. So in 2010, the Ministry of Health (MOH) and DraftFCB looked at new ways to get significantly more people to recognise the illness and take action about recovery.

The results have been astonishing: four months after the campaign went live, more than 150,000 Kiwis responded to the call and visited the site to assess their level of risk. 8,300 of them took the next step, signing up to The Journal to start learning the skills needed to guide their own recovery. Some found their journey too challenging to tackle alone and reached out, with 551 messages to the personalised services asking for help. In addition, many GPs have reported patients discussing the programme during consultations. To put that response in context, it should be remembered that approximately 2,000 people would normally visit their doctor for depression in the same period.

“Strategic vision, innovation, customer engagement and retention – every element a winner in its own right. What an outstanding achievement!” says Sue McCarty, chief executive at the Marketing Association.

Unlike the Effies, when the Whiskas campaign took top honours, it was undoubtedly ‘The Journal’s’ night. But there were plenty of other excellent performances.

justONE won the RSVP Grand Prix in 2009 for the Subway Subcard loyalty programme (although it lost part of the account before Christmas) and the agency took home another nice haul in this year’s edition, with one gold Nexus, three Gold RSVPs and one Silver RSVP.

“It was great to be able to see the developments of the Farmers Beauty Club recognised with two golds, as well as different initiatives for Subway,” says managing director Ben Goodale. “And it’s great for the team to get the recognition for their hard work, and for our clients too; our awards reflect our core skills in CRM, 1-1 comms, digital and strategic thinking. Given our fairly modest size, it was also great that we once again delivered such a strong performance in these important effectiveness awards, outperforming larger agencies and networks … It’s also worth mentioning our collaboration with .99 on Farmers has delivered awards success on top of commercial success for all concerned.”

AffinityID (with three Nexus Golds and a RSVP Craft), bcg2, Republik and Colenso BBDO also kept things interesting with Gold-winning performances, while the hard work also paid off for a number of first-time entrants and companies submitting their own work, including Gladeye with their mixandmatcher goodness for House of Travel (two Silvers), The New Zealand Herald (two Bronzes), MediaWorks Radio (one Bronze) and ChildFund New Zealand (RSVP Craft Runner-up).

The just released and freshly redesigned March/April edition of NZ Marketing magazine includes a thorough rundown of the star of the show, The Journal, as well as all the other winning entries.

The full list of winners is available at www.responseiseverything.co.nz.

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