Spacestation scoops first Yahoo! Digital Strategy Award of 2013 for IAG NZ ‘Need2Know’ campaign
Auckland agency Spacestation has taken out the first Yahoo! Digital Strategy Award for this year, with its ‘Need2Know’ campaign for insurance company, IAG New Zealand.
Following the Canterbury earthquakes, IAG needed to help educate New Zealanders about insurance changes and new requirements to insure properties to re-build value.
This was a relatively complicated proposition and a significant departure from the status quo. IAG needed to make the process of calculating customers’ house re-build costs as user-friendly as possible, so developed the Need2Know site and 
online calculator.
Placing the customer at the heart of its programme, recognising the audience diversity and tailoring communications accordingly, Spacestation created a multi-layered digital strategy aimed at generating reach, driving quality traffic, delivering engagement on-site and encouraging people to use the Need2Know online tools.
This strategy included online video placements supporting a range of video executions – from TVCs to long-format informational guides – to provide information and analysis of the changes, banner and link placements around news-based content and real estate environments, and long-format advertorial supporting copy and videos to provide depth of content. In addition, display activity and search engine marketing connected people searching for insurance to the site quickly and easily.
With a tough brief on a complex topic, judges were impressed with Spacestation’s smart digital thinking and strategic planning, which delivered exceptional metrics against IAG’s business objectives.
Says Hazel Phillips, Idealog editor and Digital Strategy Award judge: “In a digital world full of lolcats and youtube videos of people doing stupid stuff, it’s hard to get audiences engaged in more serious, complex subject matter.
“With this campaign delivering over 4.2 million unique views and quality traffic and more than 43,000 users of the Need2Know calculator, Spacestation and IAG are to be applauded for having overcome that complexity to reach a diverse audience and achieve outstanding cut-through.”
Fellow judges Helen Baxter, managing directrix of Mohawk Media, and Alisa Higgins, general manager of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, agreed.
Says Maxter: “Spacestation produced a high value campaign that fulfilled the need to educate home owners about insurance changes and provided an interactive and real-time way for them to calculate the cost of a home re-build.”
The Yahoo! Digital Strategy Awards are run bi-annually and assess campaigns’ ability to deliver against key objectives and successfully address marketing and business challenges through digital campaigns.
Says Louis Niven, Yahoo! New Zealand general manager sales: “Competition in this Awards round has been fierce.
“It is great to see such a high calibre of entries and that the bar for digital campaigns being developed by New Zealand agencies continues to be raised. We congratulate Spacestation and look forward to seeing the innovative campaigns that agencies deliver in the next six months.”
Young & Shand’s ‘Ultimate After Party’ campaign for Hallenstein Brothers and the BNZ ‘YouMoney’ campaign by Mediacom were runners-up and also attracted high praise from the judges for their creative use of digital media.
Entries for the next Yahoo! Digital Strategy Awards are open now, click here to enter.