DraftFCB and Colenso BBDO share lion’s share of Grand Prix + Gold at tonight’s 2013 AXIS Awards – Grand AXIS to DraftFCB’s Mini ‘Driving Dogs’
At a sell-out event at the Viaduct Events Centre tonight 800 of the industry’s finest came together to celebrate the best NZ creative work of the past year.
The highly prized Grand AXIS for 2013 was awarded to DraftFCB New Zealand for its Driving Dogs campaign for client MINI New Zealand. The successful campaign also scooped one of the inaugural Grand Prix awards from the Direct Marketing and PR/Experiential Jury and a further 7 Gold Axis awards. The judges spoke of a fantastic piece of work that until you see it with your own eyes you would have thought it impossible.
After 3 rounds of judging, the Executive judging panel including Feh Tarty, from Mother in London and Damon Stapleton from Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney, who both flew into Auckland earlier in the week, felt there were a number of campaigns that really stood out as exceptional this year. The job of the Executive panel was to award the Grand Prix and Grand Axis Awards and both international judges were on hand to present these on the night.
Donation Glasses provided Colenso BBDO/Proximity New Zealand and Finch a Grand Prix from the Radio & Screen Content Jury and 4 additional Gold awards. The judges felt the technology, messaging, tone, and freshness of the creative idea worked in the most harmonious of ways.
DraftFCB’s Call Girl campaign for Prime TV helped spread the Gold around, also picking up a Grand Prix in Radio from the Radio & Screen Content jury. Feh Tarty said the Call Girl campaign for radio did an amazing job for waking up what some may describe as a sleepy category.
String Theory was the other recipient of a Grand Prix from the Craft jury for their Metamorphosis campaign for client Good Books.
Creative business of the Year (awarded each year to the client with the most points awarded for finalists and awards won on the night), went to DB Breweries with a total of 4 gold awards adding to their tally of finalists, bronze & silver.
Other big winners included The Sweet Shop, once again picking up Production Company of the Year.
The legendary David ‘Devo’ Walden (below left) was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award for his illustrious career in advertising.
The Executive Judging Panel awarded the Emerging Talent award to Ben Polkinghorne and Anna Stickley from Colenso BBDO/Proximity New Zealand who both demonstrated outstanding talent as newcomers to the industry. TVNZ’s Axis Student Challenge Award went to Jordan Dale and Ryan Worsford from AUT AdSchool.
Axis has always been the pivotal moment in the New Zealand creative calendar because it is a celebration of our best work; the work our industry is most proud of because it has broken the rules, permeates popular culture and influences behavioural change, and the winners this year are all great examples of those attributes. Congratulations to all the finalists and winners said Paul Head, CEO of CAANZ.
The gala dinner was preceded by a day of speaker events that included 6 high profile speakers including Tony Kaye, Tom Uglow (Google’s Creative Labs), author Don Watson and Michael Hilliard of Finch. The inaugural Getty Images Axis Exhibition showcased the work of the 2013 finalists.
For the complete record of results visit the CAANZ website
The Major Winners and Gold Winners:
28 Comments
Called it.
http://www.campaignbrief.co.nz/2013/03/caanz-organisers-get-together.html#comments
Well done Regan and co. Well deserved you son of a bitch.
Scam.
I thought that was our ad?
Well deserved wins. Nice one FCB and Colenso.
When everyone (i.e. crew & suppliers) were approached to make the “Dogs Driving’ spot, were they told it was being produced for MINI or the SPCA?
And did they donate their time and resources?
It’s a reasonable question. The SPCA aren’t even mentioned.
Thanks to Mark Vette for helping find ‘Buzz’ the dog for Donation Glasses. Also, thanks to all the people who donated their time to shoot for little or no money. Appreciated.
Donation glasses – Brilliant idea, great execution.
BUT as it was a campaign that was viewed in 1 cinema hired out and populated by Colenso staff means that this shouldn’t win any awards either here or abroad.
I feel sorry for the all the fantastic campaigns that missed awards because of this blatant scam.
With regards to Draft’s radio promo for Prime – how can it win a Guerrilla AND Paid Radio Axis? Also, how did it win a Direct Response Axis? Surely the only people who directly responded were the radio DJs? And since there were TWO media buyers listed in the credits, I can’t help but feel the radio DJ’s involvement here wasn’t as “genuine” as it appears in the award entries.
In short. How can something win a Direct Response award, when the respondents were paid to respond? And how can something be both Guerrilla and Traditional at the same time?
Looking pretty flash there Hywel!
Good Question Question!
How or why did someone say he would get some of the awards bumped up from bronze to silver for a certain agency when he is suppose to have no say in the judging process?
Why did the dessert, “Cadbury Roses Chocolates, kindly provided by Cadbury”, never appear? And if they had, who would have felt short changed? And why only one appearance from Richard O’Brien?
Oh, and something something dogs.
I agree with scam said:
The radio promo for Prime is an unworthy winner, for the questions raised by Question. Driving Dogs generated a lot of publicity and got people talking about adopting dogs, but would have done very little for Mini. Axis is not (at) all about effectiveness, but really?
@scam they activated the campaign in a whole stack of cinemas didn’t they?
As always I felt completely disillusioned by the awards, and got absolutely shit faced. Our industry is always going to be considered a joke when we continue to award frauds, scams and New World ads.
Well done Draft FCB and Colenso! Great result. How did DDB go? Can’t seem to get the full results on the CAANZ site.
@Unquestionably agree -Nah, it would have done a great deal for Mini in terms of brand impressions at the very least on those millions of links and dozens of mainstream media stories. But that’s not what Axis is about…
Please post a link to one international news story about driving dogs that mentions mini. Just one. As you say there are hundreds, so one should be easy.
Type in Mini driving dogs. You’ll find About 12,700,000 pages.
So yeah, I think Mini got mentioned a few times.
Hey, @ Marvin, google Mini driving dogs and check out the results for yourself. But you wont eh, cause that will spoil your little whinge.
If Driving Dogs was truly a campaign for Mini, then Mini should of been rewarded Client of the Year.
From our discussions in the judges room, we felt we couldn’t award Mini client of the Year as it wasn’t their campaign so we gave it to DB.
Two days later we are still waiting to see one of the “millions of links” and “dozens of mainstream media stories” that mention Mini?
Here’s one. There are plenty on google. Now shush up you petulant little scrap.
http://www.autoblog.com/2012/12/12/new-zealand-spca-teaches-rescue-dogs-how-to-drive-a-mini/
but even that links reads ‘spca teaches rescue dogs how to drive’
fair argument that general p took spca out of this campaign not mini.
reasonably obvious agency has tried to turn this around with PR and print.
still gold idea though.
Driving Dogs brought two marketing departments together over one brilliant, funny, engaging, popular project.
As if one marketing department isn’t hard enough to deal with…
‘Who it’s for’ is a pretty conservative question to ask, don’t you think? It was born for both. It worked for both. That makes it a hard thing to retrofit into awards categories.
So the agency obviously did the smart thing and pushed it away from the treacherous ‘charity’ categories, which juries go hot and then cold on, year after year. It seems more legit for Mini, so make it for Mini. That doesn’t mean it’s not also for SPCA.
Consumers saw ‘SPCA dogs driving MINI’. Only us wankers on Campaign Brief saw an exclusive MINI campaign.
Wheres the catagory for Best Animal Trainers. That was a world first Buzz’s campaign for Colenso was the same trainers and award winning too. This is an art form too guys some might say the success of the campaigns started there.