A truly Special night at the EFFIEs
October 13 2009, 9:09 am | | 19 Comments
What may have not been clear to the audience attending the EFFIEs, was that new independent agency, Special Group, actually won more Gold than any other agency, converting its four finalists for the Green Party ‘Vote for Me’ campaign into three Gold and one Bronze awards.
This turns out to be an unprecedented achievement. Says Ric Osborne of CAANZ: “We’ve checked, and can confirm that this is the first time in New Zealand Effie history that a single campaign has been recognised with three Gold Effies”.
It was a remarkable showing from Special, who won as many Golds on the night as Saatchi & Saatchi, DDB and Colenso BBDO combined.
19 Comments
This is an interesting one for debate.
My view is that the Greens got good support through their solid policies and leadership. Yes i am a Green supporter. NOT by a low budget, low media spend ad campaign.
I also think that there are to many external factors in an election that would effect the measure on a ad campaign such as this (i.e editorial, Free PR, interviews, radio commentary….. add another 30 plus areas to this) And with this in mind it should not be in the awards.
Also political campaigns are traditionally not entered into awards.
I do though like the creative and i think it should be in AXIS? Was it entered?
Agree totally.
Funny. Axis does not allow politcal advertising.
Agree, the party had good leadership for this particular election year. And they got talked about more than ever before. But, come on, most of the talk was about the campaign. It was a fantastic effort – compare the work to Labour or National! I think, undeniably, the campaign helped The Green’s find a new voice and a new generation of support.
Why does AXIS not allow political advertising? If it does not, why they hell does the Eiffes? Seams even more silly.
I think they got EFFIES because they helped spread the effluent that comes out of Green MP’s mouthes.
but nobody voted for the fucking greens did they ?
The issue I have with the Greens work was that it didn’t say anything new to compell me to vote for them.
That ad campaign could have run in 1975, 1985, or 1995. It only appealed to a market the was already convinced.
Governments in New Zealand get voted out, not new ones voted in.
Any extra votes the Greens got were based upon the fact that a majority of people were fucked off with Nanny Helen.
The Greens got (from memory) 5.8% of the vote. The Values Party (the precursor to the Green Party) polled in the region of +10% in the late 70’s, early 80’s.
I fail to see the success.
Agree 7.27, bang on, my research says you are right.
The sad thing, it exposes Effies and what they are about. What were they judging on or against.
Political campaigns should not be in awards. Especially effectiveness ones. Special a stupid to enter it, it makes them look very small and Effies clowns for accepting it.
Weak
great campaign. stood head and shoulders above the rest of the political advertising.
but yeah, apart from the greenies, the only people who voted for greens were labour voters too fucked off with labour and not fucked off enough to vote national.
cue nice looking ad with a brilliant soundtrack that says ‘vote for me’.
hmm, maybe it did deserve the effies then.
You fuckers just all wish you worked at Special.
Fuck.
National won by the biggest margin in history. Wouldn’t that mean that the national ad campaign would have won all the Effies? Tell me if i am wrong someone.
Good debate until someone starts swearing from Special. A bit small minded. The more debate the better on topics like this.
Fuck whatever. They were really nice posters. And the online stuff was smart too.
7.23 makes a pretty good point.
Yet again the New Zealand advertising industry holds up a large sign with “please don’t take us seriously” written in beautiful cursive script.
If I read one more time that the Green campaign was a success I will lose it completely.
The campaign was a failure.
It was ineffective.
It was pretty and stupid, and because of this its success reinforces every negative stereotype of the advertising industry.
Faced with the total collapse of the labour vote the Greens failed to capture anything like the level of support they should have. They didn’t win 9 seats in spite of a shift to the right, they won 9 seats because of a shift to the right. Had their campaign had some substance to it – or reacted to the political opportunity with which the Greens were faced, they would, and should, have won more than 12 seats.
No political commentator considered the Greens election result anything other than disappointing.
The political naivety of the Effies judging panel reflects poorly on us all.
I think Paul everyone agrees they were “nice” posters.
What people are debating is the fact it should not have been entered into awards because there are to many factors which sway it’s true effectiveness.
Thats why agencies don’t enter political work in awards. And thats why agencies stay away from political work.
It is small minded and desperate for Special to enter it. And it is stupid for judges to vote for it. It seams all a bit dumb to me.
I agree though they were “nice” posters. I didn’t mind them.
Well it should have been entered into the awards because Special had a rough idea they could get something. Which they did. Which is what awards are for – if you know how to win them – go for it. They’re just playing the game and good on them – Special didn’t write the rules – they just did a bloody good job of reading them.
The Effies are highly questionable and the way they are judged does nothing to help matters. There were over 50 judges in the initial session that I attended! Some of them were very average junior product managers. Crazy! CAANZ should pay heed to what they did with Axis and get an overseas jury to (at the very least) judge the metal stage. I agree that political advertising is too hard to judge with any degree of accuracy. But at least the work was classy and single-minded and stood out from the cheesy front three quarter head shots of politicians that we were all bombarded with. As for the ‘Best in Show’, purlease….compared to the utter rubbish that has been Kiwi Bank advertising for the last three years (a friend described it to me the other day as an NZ version of Allo Allo), the Greens campaign was beautiful work. One of our clients sitting next to me during the ‘show’ (if you can call it that) was horrified at how average the work was. When I pointed out to him that creativity was only a small percentage of the final mark, he just about left there and then. He couldn’t believe that the industry was there to celebrate what was effectively average work. It didn’t compute in his mind. Thank God for him and clients like him. Not a bad new name for the Effies that – ‘Effectively Average Work’.
Wow some real debate for once on the old blog site!!!!!
I am not sure The Greens work was effective at all when you really dig down deep. You can not pin any of their success down to this campaign Special did. The Greens had three strong policy points which got huge exposure in a media world (at the time) hammering sustainabilty and climate change. The trends of the times got votes and that is a million times bigger than some ad campaign with a 200k media budget.
I think Special were silly to enter this into the awards. It has no place in awards and is a desperate plea for PR. As one blogger said above if the National campaign was entered it would have won 5 gold’s at the Effies (love or hate the creative). At the end of the day they won by the biggest margin in history. End of story. And if it’s all about results then their you go. I am glad they had the sense not to enter it though.