Naked & Special Group’s Unitec campaign takes out Best In Show at 2013 CAANZ Media Awards
“We make the people who make it” was an enormous claim that needed serious substantiation, but Naked and Special Group managed that and more in an exceptional campaign that took out the coveted Best in Show at last night’s CAANZ Media Awards in Auckland.
Best in Show was judged by the international judging panel who agreed the Unitec campaign was rich with insight and made very clever use of technology, producing great results for Unitec, the Auckland tertiary institution with a proud history of creating careers. The campaign also claimed three gold awards for Naked and Special Group in the Best Use of a Lead Medium, Best Smart Media Idea and Social Marketing/Public Service categories.
After intense judging sessions two campaigns emerged as the strongest overall. The Unitec campaign and the Mitre 10 “Easy As” DiY campaign, produced by DraftFCB Media. Making DiY “Easy As” delivered an insightful, high quality campaign that successfully gave Mitre 10 strong market profile and competitive differentiation. It also delivered Gold to DraftFCB Media in Retail/Etail, Best Use of Branded Content, Best Communications Strategy and Best Integrated Campaign.
Inspiring customers to undertake more DiY with their “Easy As” videos with Stan, brought back Kiwi’s confidence in DiY and also earned Mitre 10 the deserving Advertiser of the Year Award.
2013 saw a record number of 286 entries. After four rounds of judging by highly qualified New Zealand and International judges, a total of 11 Gold and 26 Silver trophies were awarded.
“There was some truly outstanding work this year that really impressed both the local and international judges. And perhaps more importantly the work also clearly demonstrated that great media thinking and execution has the power to make the difference for a client’s business” said CAANZ CEO Paul Head.
Other big winners included TVNZ who went home with the Media Brand of the Year award for Creating Conversations that Move People. “At a time when audiences continue to fragment and channels converge, TVNZ impressed the judges with their strategic focus on meeting the needs of agencies and advertisers, and applying this across all facets of their business. They demonstrate how they have taken their offer to the next level through the development of new bespoke advertising solutions whilst still protecting audience scale and quality across all touch points with outstanding results” commented Convener of Judges Lew Bentley.
Louise Bond, CEO of Spark PHD, was a popular winner of the Inspiring Individual Award (in memory of Sandy Smith). Louise’s colleagues spoke of a woman who was not just a talented and accomplished professional, but a person who is widely admired and makes a considerable contribution to the media industry, including her on-going service to the CAANZ Executive Board and Media Committee.
The theme for this year’s awards was The Media Renaissance, reflecting the current climate of discovery, exploration and progress with new media thinking. The winners all showed a strong command of the profession and prove that New Zealand advertising is in good hands in a time of dynamic change.