It’s that time of year again, the finalists of the Axis Awards have just been announced and Colenso BBDO/Proximity is well ahead with 85 entries, followed by FCB with 58, Y&R with 51 and last year’s biggest winner (which also took home Creative Agency of the Year), DDB with 33.
Browsing: Axis Awards
2015 will mark the 35th anniversary of the Axis Awards, and to commemorate this milestone CAANZ will be showcasing some of the work that has been awarded over the course of that period. But, as has always been the case, this year’s edition will be about awarding the best work produced over the course of the last year. And to do that as effectively as possible, CAANZ has introduced a few changes to the awards categories for this year’s event.
While Clemenger BBDO’s ‘Blazed’ campaign and Colenso BBDO/Proximity’s Smartphone Line stole much of the attention at last night’s Axis Awards, the magazine category showed that the Kiwi creative streak still extends to print.
The bar for call for entries campaigns has risen significantly in recent years, with the likes of DraftFCB’s ‘The real judge of advertising is the consumer’ campaign for the 2011 Effies and TBWA\’s ‘Results Don’t Lie’ effort this year standing out. And there are a couple more good ones bubbling away at the moment for the Axis Awards and the newly rejigged Beacon Awards.
When Axis set out to stage a more collegial and celebratory awards show this year, it might not have imagined agencies cosied in warm embrace over each other’s work, nor its trophy moving in for a fleeting kiss with a doppelganger. But as this year’s awards open for business, Clemenger BBDO has paired off the big guns and asked them to love each other as only agencies can.
The Cannes Lions are looming and, as Colenso BBDO’s managing director Nick Garrett said in a recent interview about the refreshed Axis Awards, “something has a better chance at the end of a 12 month cycle if it’s had exposure and has started to do well at international awards”. So can we predict how the Kiwi agencies might do at the world’s most prestigious industry awards? Here’s a league table from the Axis Awards based on the same points system used by Cannes (and CAANZ), with one point for a finalist, three points for bronze, five points for silver, seven points for gold and ten points for grand prix.
New Zealand finished off its Cannes run with a few more nods over the weekend, with Special Group and Colenso BBDO adding two gongs each to bring the total local haul for the Festival of Creativity to 21, an improvement on last year’s paltry six lions but still not quite back up to the record 25 lions in 2010.
No golds were handed out in the Radio Single category, but DDB walked away with the next best thing, a silver for its ‘Van Gogh’ commercial, which was part of the Arts Channel radio campaign for Sky TV. It was the only award handed out in the category and adds to the Silver Lion Scriptwriting award picked up by DDB last year at Cannes. Listen to it here. No golds or silvers were handed out in the Radio Campaign category, but DDB won bronze for the Arts Channel campaign (Van Gogh, Rothco and Pollock) and TBWA\Tequila followed suit with a bronze for the 2degrees campaign. Anne Boothroyd and Bigid Alkema’s Sliding Doors was voted the best radio ad of the decade for the Radio Bureau’s Grandest Orca.
The Soundtrack category honours original music or arrangement as well as exisiting music, and Speights ‘Man Like Natural’ campaign, with its ‘we can grow beards if we want to’ hook, earned The Sweet Shop a silver. Liquidstudios was the only other winner, picking up a bronze in the category for its sonic touch on the ‘Telecom Brand 2010’ campaign.
You can almost feel the collective hangover after 680 creatively-minded humans gathered together last night at the huge and rather impressive Orams Marine Boat Park to celebrate the 30th birthday of the CAANZ Axis awards, as well as the creativity, ideas and personalities the industry has fostered in that time.
Tickets for the 30th anniversary Axis awards are now on sale at the CAANZ website. But the powers that be have sent a stern warning: tickets are limited, so you need to get online and secure them now.
Nintendo Wii, PS2, PS3, PSP, Xbox … meh, these video game consoles are so like, new millennium. There’s nothing like a good solid game of the old-school favourite, Pacman.
This year has seen a record number of entries into the annual CAANZ Axis Awards, which recognise creative excellence in New Zealand. Entries are up by 40 compared to 2009.
The 30th anniversary of the AXIS awards next year is sure to be a nostalgic shindig. But it will also be referencing the future.
The Communications Agencies Association of NZ (CAANZ) has partnered with Vodafone to champion mobile marketing and “celebrate creativity and effectiveness in the mobile channel,” says Vodafone mobile marketing manager, Simon Neal. “It is a young and evolving channel, and presents a tremendous and very unique opportunity for brands to engage …