NZ Direct Marketing Awards: Saatchi & Saatchi scores Grand Prix and Nexus Supreme Award
Last night the winners of the 2015 NZ Direct Marketing Awards were unveiled at a prestigious gala dinner held in The Great Room at The Langham. Over 500 guests celebrated the campaigns defining and shaping the new possible in Direct Marketing.
ASB Bank, with agency Saatchi & Saatchi, and Data Insight proved to be the champions of the night, taking out the top awards – Grand Prix and the Nexus Supreme – respectively.
The Grand Prix judges said the ASB Snap Scholarships campaign was “a breath of fresh air, demonstrating how well ASB understood their market by introducing a relevant and highly engaging Snapchat campaign, motivating a fickle market to act”. A popular winner with the judges was the “Valocity” entry by Data Insight. “In a highly competitive environment, the transformation of the property data into usable information for customers was fantastic” said the Nexus Supreme judging panel. Blending a range of diverse data sources, Valocity presents customers with actionable property data in an intuitively useable form.
Says Shane Evans, general manager, ASB: “This is a stellar result so congratulations to the whole team at ASB and Saatchi & Saatchi who all worked incredibly hard to open up this new channel to deliver outstanding results. It’s a great demonstration and recognition of how we can use data and insights to drive results.
“With the largest social media following of any bank in New Zealand, ASB strives to engage and speak to each of our audiences in a language and medium that they identify and feel comfortable with. Snapchat is an exciting social media platform, and the ASB Snap Scholarships campaign offers a unique opportunity to engage with tertiary students across the country as they enter the next phase of their financial lives. It has once again proved to be relevant to our student-customers and, in this instance, shows how our brand is a playful yet natural fit for those studying.”
Says Paul Wilson, managing director, Saatchi & Saatchi: “These awards are testament to the great partnership we share with ASB. Their creative standards and commitment to constant innovation are what’s driving us to deliver effective, engaging campaigns like ‘Snap Scholarships’.”
Hosted by the Marketing Association’s chief executive, Gill Stewart and for the second year in a row MC Michele A’Court, the awards continue to celebrate and recognise the clients, agencies, consultancies and suppliers who have exhibited excellence in insight-driven direct marketing projects and campaigns, connected with customers on an individual basis, and generated outstanding results. The NZ Direct Marketing Awards are proudly sponsored by New Zealand Post.
Judging was held over two rounds and with a 20% increase in unique company entries compared to 2014, the experts had a tough task determining the winners. A total of 85 unique campaigns from 35 unique entrants all vied for metal this year.
This year Foodstuffs took out the coveted Keith Norris Direct Marketing Organisation of the Year Award which the judges said was a wonderful case study: “One of NZ’s biggest businesses has transformed itself into a data-driven organisation; marketing-led but impacting the whole organisation. The customer-driven journey delivered great customer engagement and results. This is a journey that will become an academic treatise in the future.” Rounding out the top honours was Mark Thompson, customer experience manager at Mitre 10 (New Zealand) who was crowned the Direct Marketer of the Year for 2015.
Other big winners on the night were justONE with 13 awards, six of these with client AMP, as well as four additional awards won jointly with .99 and clients Foodstuffs New Zealand and Genesis Energy. Colenso BBDO/Proximity also took home a total of 13 winning metals with clients, MARS Pedigree, Bank of New Zealand, Spark, Fonterra Brands (Tip Top) and New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation. FCB New Zealand were just on their heels with 12 awards, six of them with client Air New Zealand, who also celebrated winning nine awards which they had entered directly or with Westpac New Zealand.
Campaign Haus of Versant took home five golds for client Fuji Xerox New Zealand and agency Republik New Zealand; Valocity campaign received five awards; Rainger & Rolfe with clients AA Smarfuel and AA Life took home five awards; ASB Bank and Saatchi & Saatchi also received three Golds for ASB Snap Scholarships on top of their Grand Prix win.
The NZ Direct Marketing Awards are brought to you by the Marketing Association and made possible thanks to the support of our premier awards sponsor New Zealand Post and category sponsor Fairfax Media.