A round up of all the triumphant Creative Showcase winners and runners up from May-July 2008

Friday, 5 September 2008

The IAB/Microsoft Advertising Awards celebrate the very best in digital creativity, and this event at Soho Hotel on 3 September profiled the luck (and rewarding) winners from the past few months. Opening to a room full of creatives from the online advertising world, Kieron Matthews of the IAB outlined the massive leaps that have been made over the last five years in online advertising production and encouraged the audience to be inspired by what they see, and use it to help in the creation of their next work.

It was then David Pugh-Jones’ turn to get the ball rolling by handing out the awards. Agency Republic grabbed May’s first place, for 'The truth about Smart' campaign. Jim & Tim the two brains behind the operation explained the mission they had in reducing the skepticism consumers hold about the Smart ‘fortwo’ car. Via a series of questions, users travel through the microsite learning that the car is comfier, more spacious and safer than originally thought. ‘We purposely didn’t use CGI or flash, we just wanted to achieve a natural look and feel to the microsite’, revealed Jim and Tim. The microsite drew much praise from blogs and to date has attracted over 158 thousand visitors.

June’s winner was digital agency Poke with their 'Balloonacy - The Orange Balloon Race' campaign. The theme of this campaign was to ‘engage and excite’ the youth audience to which the new orange tariff was aimed, with a balloon race across the internet. 3,000 casual gamers and devoted followers got involved for the chance to win the fantastic prize of a trip to an Ibiza villa for 16 people. The campaign was a huge success in attracting half a million site visitors, blog sites saw their traffic jump dramatically and 15,000 widgets were installed across social networking sites. ‘Whoring for boosts’ in blogs was a common site during the campaign added Ian Tait, the Creative Director behind the campaign. Tait also revealed that more time would have been greatly appreciated, ‘hard deadlines are not ideal…having a flexible end date’ would have suited this campaign much better, as these were ‘uncharted waters, a great deal more of testing could have been done’.

Play’s, 'Ride the Scuba' scooped July’s first prize with their site for Fosters beer. The campaign aimed to imitate the new widget, aka ‘Scuba’, which is present in the new Foster’s lager cans. The idea came to Play quickly of how they would target the distinctive market of 18-24 year old males. They proceeded to develop the world’s first internet-enabled scuba diving installation, taking the audience inside Foster’s cans and into the world of the Scuba. ‘Ride the Scuba' generated huge buzz from websites, blogs, as well as both trade and consumer press. The number of visitors to the website increased by more than 50% every day with users spending roughly 12 minutes of their time there. Jon Sharpe, the man responsible for the word said ‘trusting, if it can work, means it will work’.

This event saw some outstanding campaigns and creatives proudly boasting about their highly innovative and exceptionally inspired digital work. Furthermore the competition is becoming increasingly fierce, with a wider range of agencies being awarded for their excellence and a diverse bunch of excellent entries each month. The last three months of creativity have served to merge the virtual to the real world seamlessly. Marketers across the industry take note - the aesthetics behind these original pieces of work can and should be applied to future campaigns regardless of your sector - the same principles still apply.

May

Winner: 'The truth about Smart' by Agency Republic
First Runner-Up: 'Carrie's Macbook' by New Media Maze
Second Runner-Up: 'ICT' by Lean Mean Fighting Machine

June

Winner: 'Balloonacy - The Orange Balloon Race' by Poke
First Runner-Up: 'Nike PhotoiD' by AKQA
Second Runner-Up: 'It's Sunshine O'Clock' by Agency Republic

July

Winner: 'Ride the Scuba' by Play
First Runner-Up: 'Four Ridges Must be Destroyed' by Tonic
Second Runner-Up: 'New Blood 2008' by AIS London