She’s been behind some of the country’s most creative—and creatively awarded—marketing campaigns, but after four years with the embattled Yellow Pages Group, business transformation director and former marketing director Kellie Nathan has decided it’s time for a change.
As the entry video shows, Yellow and Colenso believed you could get anything done with Yellow. But in a world dominated by Google, they had to say it loudly. And, like the award-winning Yellow Treehouse before it, Yellow Chocolate did just that. Whether this campaign achieved business results is debateable (Yellow could also be in line for the Creative Accounting Business of the Year), but that’s an argument for another day. In keeping with the creative Axis vibe, what is clear is that Colenso came up with a big, complicated idea, the Yellow powers that be were brave enough to run with it and the pair brought the many disparate parts together in the form of a chocolate bar.
Colenso’s ‘Yellow Chocolate’ was the only campaign deemed worthy of a nod in the Social category and was awarded one of eight golds for its efforts, while DraftFCB’s ‘The Journal’ was also a lonely winner in the Digital/Interactive category after picking up a bronze.
Colenso is at the top of its creative game at the moment and it’s certainly walking the talk when it comes to devising big ideas that get brands talked about by consumers. And while Yellow Pages is wrestling with a few rather large financial demons at present, the pair’s impressive award-winning run continued last night at Vector Arena, when Yellow Chocolate was awarded the Grand Axis, the Titanium gold Axis and the Integrated gold Axis at the 2011 CAANZ Axis awards.
Yeah, yeah, we know it’s 2011, but due to moderately popular demand (and also due to the fact that we’re running at about 34 percent brain functionality at present and good old reliable Q+A’s are a good way for everyone to ease back in), we’ve decided to post a few more year in reviews from esteemed industry opinionistos/opinionistas that we didn’t have space/time to run last year. First up, Nick Garrett, the man who took the reins from Colenso BBDO’s outgoing managing director Brent Smart and, after winning a host of big awards, snaffling some big new business and doing a fine impersonation of Mini Me at the Colenso Christmas party in his first year, can’t have too much to complain about. Here’s what tickled his fancy last year.
It was all about ‘reverse integration’ for bcg2 this year, after it merged with Grey Global Group. And with some solid work for Lion and Audi, as well as the recent acquisition of the Esquires account, the new relationship seems to be going fairly swimmingly so far. Director of strategy and planning Abe Dew (who’s written a great piece on agency/client relationships in the latest NZ Marketing magazine, by the way) pipes up on 2010.
The Spikes Asia spikes were dished out last night and the 2010 ‘Asian Cannes’ was a bit of a two-horse race between DDB New Zealand, which was named Agency of the Year and helped DDB Group Asia Pacific to Network of the Year accolades, and Colenso BBDO, which was named Media Agency of the Year and placed third for overall Agency of the Year.
All the Lions have been delivered at Cannes and Colenso BBDO has easily topped the Kiwi agency list, bringing home a record haul of ten leonine friends (three Gold, four Silver and three Bronze), out of a total of 25 for Kiwi agencies.
Colenso BBDO will be hoping that the 10-man Cannes Lions jury will perform a feat of advertising alchemy and turn their ‘Yellow Chocolate’ campaign for Yellow Pages into a Titanium Lion after it was named on the Titanium and Integrated Lions Shortlist at the 2010 Cannes Lions Advertising Festival.
It seems the chocolate reviews written by our StopPress readers have caused Yellow chocolate to sell out! Well, perhaps we’re being a little presumptuous, but the sweet yellowish concoction has all but vanished from supermarket shelves, making it the fastest selling chocolate bar over the past year. Not bad considering its chocolate creator Josh Winger, only got assigned the ‘mission’ to create the yellow chocolate six months ago.
Wine, like chocolate, is better when it comes equipped with a ridiculous summary, so add an über-descriptive, extremely specific review of the new Yellow chocolate to the comment wall below and the best entries will get to lay their tastebuds on a selection of the alkaloid of the Gods from Barista@Home. We might even send you some Yellow chocolate.