GLOBAL – Campaigns for global brands such as Google Translate, Knorr and Maybelline, and local brands including Danner in Denmark and Jinlingguan in China, are among the winners of the Effective Use of Tech category of the WARC Media Awards 2019, a global case study competition recognising communications planning which has made a positive impact on business results.
A total of eight winners – one Grand Prix, two Golds, two Silvers and three Bronzes – have been awarded in the Effective Use of Tech category, showcasing communications that have effectively used or combined emerging platforms or technology in the media mix, contributing to the overall business success of the campaign.
The jury chaired by Isabel Massey, Global Media Director, Marketing, Diageo, also awarded three Special Awards for particular areas of expertise:
– Early Adopter Award: how a brand successfully embraced a new platform
– Most Scalable Idea Award: for a tech-led idea with the scope to make an impact within its sector and, potentially, beyond
– Platform Pioneer Award: how a brand found an innovative and effective way to use an existing platform
The Grand Prix has been awarded to Mindshare Sydney for ‘Monty – The World’s first AI predictive commentator’, a game-changing campaign for Australian pay TV brand Foxtel to encourage people to pay to watch cricket, a product they’d previously enjoyed for free.
Realising they had to deliver more value and transform the viewing experience, Foxtel invested heavily in data to train a custom machine learning model capable of predicting when wickets would fall in live games. Monty delivered an 18% increase in average weekly sales, while Fox Cricket became the number-one channel for share, beating the full-year performance of every other channel.
Commenting on the Grand Prix winning campaign, jury member Rosh Singh, Managing Director EMEA, UNIT9, said: “What I liked about it is that consumers don’t need to know anything about the tech, so there are no barriers to go through – it’s additive to that piece of media.”
The winners of the 2019 WARC Media Awards – Effective Use of Tech category are as follows:
Grand Prix
- Monty – The world’s first AI predictive commentator · Fox Cricket · Foxtel · Mindshare Sydney · Australia + Scalable Idea Award
Gold
- Blend-In · Pantene · Procter & Gamble · MediaCom Connections Israel, ACW Grey Tel-Aviv · Israel + Platform Pioneer Award
- The Irreplaceable Home Taste · Knorr · PHD Hong Kong · Hong Kong + Early Adopter Award
Silver
- AI Baby Expert · Jinlingguan · Yili · Mindshare · China
- The Secret Menu · Google Translate · Google · PHD China · China
Bronze
- Capacity-Based McDelivery 2.0 · McDonald’s · Hanbaobao Pte Ltd · OMD Singapore · Singapore
- QQ Dancing · Maybelline · L’Oréal · Mindshare China · China
- United Against Abuse · Danner · MediaCom · Denmark
Additional information on the 2019 WARC Media Awards – Effective Use of Tech winners, as well as winners of the Best Use of Data and Effective Channel Integration categories, is available here. The winners of the Effective Use of Partnerships & Sponsorships will be announced shortly.
The top winning papers across all categories of the WARC Media Awards share a $40,000 prize fund.
