Campaigns from India, Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines came away with a combined total of six awards at the Festival of Media Global Awards, which took place last night at the Rome Cavalieri Hotel.
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’ coming away with the Best Use of Mobile award, as well as a Bronze for 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 campaign became popular not only over Twitter and Facebook, but also on TV and print media, and 90% 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 Tom Gill, Global Media Director of Heineken and one of the judges.
Starcom MediaVest Group won Best Agency Network of the Year, with 9 campaigns across 7 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’).
Sameer Singh, VP, Head of Global Media at GlaxoSmithKline and Chair of the 2014 Awards Jury, 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 April 8th, the final night of the Festival of Media Global 2014. This year’s jury features from some of the world’s leading brands and agencies, including Craig Hepburn of Nokia, Tom Wyse of Paddy Power, Kathleen Brookbanks of OMD, and Sylvain Chevalier of Havas Media Group.
The entries are available to view on www.creamglobal.com, and during the event, delegates were able to review the shortlisted campaigns on Surface devices from Microsoft. The ceremony itself saw new additions of projection mapping technology, and Spotify also enabled winners to select their favourite track to be played when they won. This year’s Festival was held in Rome at the Rome Cavalieri Hotel, from April 6-8, 2014.
To view the full list of winners at the Festival of Media Global Awards, visit http://www.festivalofmedia.com/global/awards
