MUMBAI: Asian campaigns impressed many at the Festival of Media Global Awards.
The function which was held in Rome saw campaigns from India, Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines take away with a combined total of six awards.
Indian campaigns won Gold in two categories, with Gillette India’s ‘Soldier for Women’ winning Best Engagement Strategy and Kaan Khajura Teshan’s ‘Mobile Entertainment Box’ bagging the Best Use of Mobile award, as well as a Bronze in The Effectiveness Award category with Parachute’s ‘Convincing Consumers to Become Our Sales Force’ campaign.
UHP’s ‘First Step to Livelihood’ in the Philippines was awarded a Bronze for Best Engagement Strategy, and Red Bull’s ‘Soapbox Race’ in Taiwan also won the Bronze for Best Event/Experiential Campaign. In Japan, ‘Carrie Call’ by Movie picked up the Bronze in the Best Use of Mobile category.
UM Australia walked away with both Agency of the Year and Campaign of the Year for their innovative social media campaign ‘XTL’, which encouraged Australian teens to call out disrespectful or inappropriate online behaviour with the hashtag #XTL (crossing the line). Produced by UM for the Department of Families, Housing, Communities and Indigenous Affairs, ‘XTL’ won the Gold for Best Social Media Strategy, as well as the Silver in Best Targeted Campaign and Bronze for The Utility/Public Service Award. The 90 per cent of teens surveyed reported using #XTL in the right context.
UM also won awards for two other campaigns in Australia: News Corps’ ‘Fast Front Pages’ (Silver, Best Communications Strategy) and ING Direct’s ‘Spend Your Lunch Well’ (Gold, Best Entertainment Platform).
“The XTL campaign was particularly impressive because it showed that creativity and effectiveness is not just the domain of big brands, but that government departments can also be at the heart of great campaigns. XTL was a serious, socially responsible campaign that used modern technology to reach a modern audience,” says Heineken global media director Tom Gill, who was also one of the judges.
Starcom MediaVest Group won Best Agency Network of the Year, with nine campaigns across seven different countries winning various awards, including UHP’s winning campaign in the Philippines. Independent agency Forsman & Bodenfors were responsible for two of Sweden’s wins for their work with Volvo Trucks on two campaigns. ‘The Epic Split’ (Bronze, Best Content Creation Award) and ‘Live Test Series’ (Bronze, Best Digitally Integrated Campaign).
For the first time ever, this year’s awards introduced tiered judging of Gold, Silver and Bronze awards to honour even more entries than ever before. The shortlisted entries were highly contested, with the judges going through several rounds of voting for many of the categories before deciding on winners.
This year’s winners come from 19 different countries around the world, including Canada, (Gold, Best Event/Experiential Campaign, with Budweiser’s ‘Red Light’); the United Arab Emirates (Gold, Best Digitally Integrated Campaign, for ‘Mapped Out’ by Etihad); and Hungary (Gold, Best Use of Technology, for Telekom’s ‘Sky Gallery’).
GlaxoSmithKline head of global media and chair of the 2014 Awards Jury Sameer Singh, comments: “It’s truly fascinating to see so many campaigns like ‘XTL’ using social media for focused, targeted outreach, and actually succeeding in changing people’s behaviour and opinions. More than ever before, marketers are seeing the value of reaching out to specific audiences through social media – brilliant propositions and clever execution rule in the entries we judged from all over the world.”
A panel of 25 industry experts judged the 191 shortlisted entries to decide upon the winners, and the awards were announced at a gala dinner on 8 April, the final night of the Festival of Media Global 2014.
