Doing its bit to represent the Wellington creative scene at the Best Awards, digital agency Resn picked up a Purple Pin in Interactive Design for its American-based virtual racing car application called Sponsafier 4. Vincent Heeringa had a chat with Rick Campbell and Steve Le Marquand, who tell us the secret to winning international work is wrack up the air miles and knock on the doors of the clients you’re after.
Over 700 designy folk attended the DINZ Best Awards event on Friday night at the swanky new Auckland Viaduct Events Centre. And with a record 812 entries, the highest in the 23 year history of the event, a multitude of Gold, Silver and Bronze pins were handed out, with five winners—Avanti, Wellington Airport, Fisher & Paykel’s Social Kitchen by Alt Group, Sarah Maxey and typographer Kris Sowersby, and Resn for Toyota’s Sponsafier—picking up a coveted Purple Pin.
Take a radio fashioned out of pavlova, some interactive nappy packaging, a 21st birthday party invite, mix it with a giant rubber duck and a home brewing system and what do you get? A snapshot of Kiwi creativity by way of the finalist entries for this year’s Best Awards, thanks to the folks at The Designer’s Institute of New Zealand.
When Saatchi & Saatchi launched its ‘Get What It Takes’ campaign for the New Zealand Army in September last year, the campaign ended up becoming the most watched branded or sponsor channel on YouTube. Now Saatchi’s is at it again, this time with a unique, crafty and pretty entertaining interactive online game for the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF).
… as Colenso group account director Lou Kuegler heads for Asia, DraftFCB makes a surprising hire, Los Angeles calls for one of the Resn crew, Kiwi copywriter Cam Brown joins Arnold Furnace and Sunday Star Times reporter Jonathan Marshall leaves Fairfax.
We could tell you about the e-gremlins that meant Fairfax failed to deliver some of its papers yesterday, or the bombshell that Tourism New Zealand’s PR company in the US helped get John Key on the David Letterman show. But we decided this supposed world-first from Wellington digital agency Resn, which brought a whole new, ridiculous and very interactive meaning to the term Twitterfeed, was much more important.
Over 10,000 entries were submitted from around the world and the nominees for The Webby’s, AKA the Oscars for nerds, were announced this week. And Special Group’s ‘Living Office’ web banner, New Zealand-based Drugs.com and Supply’s ‘Scam Machine’ for Netsafe are the only local contenders up for an award, while Resn, DraftFCB, Alt Group, Oh Baby, Fairfax and APN all received the next best thing, official honoree status.
Australia’s CREATIVE magazine has swung its steel-capped boot and connected with Resn’s soft exposed junk for a third consecutive year at the Hotshop Awards, with the Wellington agency beating off stiff competition from interactive luminaries like Pusher, Three Drunk Monkeys and Whybin/TBWA/Tequila to once again take the illustrious title of best Digital and Interactive Agency in all the lands Down Under.
Wellington digital agency Resn had to reinforce its mantelpiece after last year’s awards haul. And it has continued down the same track in 2011 with yet more accolades, including two Favourite Website Award Site of the Day awards and two Pixel awards for its work for Puma Africa and the Health Sponsorship Council.
… Saatchi & Saatchi brings in a big gun to fill a creative void, Wellywood digital agency Resn takes the piss and, at the same time, enhances its hygiene, Tourism NZ announces some fresh blood and Breeze DJ Kerry Smith leaves to fight a health battle.
The last time we heard from the Toot Group they were trying to spread the meaty truth and destroy the sausagey lies as part of a campaign for Harrington’s Sausages (in fact, the ‘Know Your Sausage’ poster made as part of the Sausage Awareness Week still hangs proudly from the StopPress walls). And now the gang is back with some more good work for The Trusty Delivery Co., a new grocery service modelled on a successful business in Australia that is aimed at busy, environmentally conscious shoppers who can’t be arsed going to the supermarket.
Resn, one of the few digital agencies in New Zealand doing regular international work, picked up a host of awards last year, including digital agency of the year for the second year running in the CREATIVE Hotshop awards and more Pixels than you could shake a stick at. And ’tis the awards season once again, with the Toyota Racing Sponsafier website it created for Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles chosen as one of three finalists in the ‘Advertising and Branding’ section of Adobe’s MAX Awards and the same website winning a silver in the Brand Destination Site for the American Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Mixx Awards.
The pioneering approach taken by the Ministry of Health for its National Depression Initiative proved to be something of a watershed for online social messaging and health communications in New Zealand. And the efforts of Wellington-based agency Resn have shown that the interactivity offered by the online realm is also proving to be an effective way of spreading the Smokefree/Auahi Kore message to Kiwi yoof.
Nominees for the 14th Webby Awards, the world’s leading international honour for online excellence, have been announced, with AIM Proximity, Resn and Terabyte Interactive nabbing two nominations and The Gap Year: Challenge New Zealand by Endemol Digital Studios also honoured.
A Lean Year
The crafty, multidisciplinary creative boffins from Alt Group have nabbed a double whammee in Australia’s CREATIVE magazine Hotshop Awards, with the company crowned design agency of the year and in-house agency of the year. And Wellywood’s digi-gurus Resn also took home a gong for the second year running for best digital and interactive agency.
Unless you’re scared of large, uninterrupted blocks of text, why would you read a story about one boring thing, when you could read a story that deals with a whole range of exciting things? That’s right, you wouldn’t. Or would you?
Wellington interactive digi-savants Resn raked in the trophies at the international Pixel awards, winning best agency, best in show and best experimental (for the JAG Jeans brand website) and two other suitably geeky space invader-themed awards (best music Site for Fat Freddy’s Drop TV and best animation for Nelson company 26000 Vodka’s website).