ASOS’ #Bestnightever by Carat Global Management has been awarded Campaign of the Year at the Festival of Media Global 2013 Awards, which was celebrated at a gala dinner in Montreux last night.
The social media commerce campaign, which saw fashion trendsetters Azealia Banks, Ellie Goulding and Charlotte Free star in music videos wearing ASOS clothes that viewers could click to purchase, was also awarded Best Entertainment Platform and Best Use of Emerging Technology.
Judges commented that the campaign offered an excellent direct link between entertainment and purchasing and used technology in a clever way, aligned with the priorities of the business. The ASOS campaign brought to life this year’s Festival theme ‘From Content to Commerce’; the judges noting that it would pave the way for ‘click to purchase’ content.
Agency of the Year Starcom MediaVest Group US was a winner of three categories and highly commended in another three, for a total of three different clients. It won Best Digitally Integrated Campaign and Creative Use of Media for the Coca Cola Polar Bowl; and Best Social Media Campaign for the Puerto Rican Government’s Follow2Unfollow.
The judges noted that Coca Cola Polar Bowl, which allowed Superbowl viewers the opportunity to watch the Coca Cola polar bear characters humorously reacting to the game, was a smart second screen strategy. They praised Follow2Unfollow, which saw prisoners tweet about the hardships of prison life to discourage youth from crime, for being a standout, eye opening social media initiative.
Latin American campaigns performed particularly well – Best Use of Content was won by OMD for SAP A La Tortrix, which reinvigorated Guatemalan pride by offering a local language audio dubbing service for television programmes traditionally dubbed over in Argentinian or Mexican. First Ever Portable Water Billboard by BPN in Peru, was awarded a Highly Commended for Creative Use of Media. In Lima and surrounding low rainfall cities, billboards were installed that converted humidity in the air to water, as part of a student recruitment drive for the University of Technology and Engineering.
Two Indian campaigns were also recognised – Best Use of Mobile went to OMD for Wheel’s One Missed Call campaign and Best Communications Strategy to Mindshare for Kissanpur’s Where What You Grow is What You Eat initiative.
For the first time, three Highly Commended places were awarded, in the Creative Use of Media category. These were Do You Want Duracell With That? by Starcom MediaVest Group, First Ever Portable Water Billboard by BPN and Quality in Your Face Journalism for The Economist by PHD.
The judges made the ruling as they felt the category was exceptionally strong.
Meanwhile, Hot New Company of the Year in the Media Accelerator Programme (M.A.P) was awarded to Future Ad Labs, whose PlayCaptcha offers short branded mini games as an alternative to traditional ‘captcha’ verifications, to improve user experience, guarantee brand engagement for advertisers and generate revenue for online platforms.
Chair of the Awards Jury, and Group Head of Global Media at Mastercard, Ben Jankowski, comments: “We were truly privileged to see such innovative, groundbreaking work from all around the world. It was refreshing to see markets such as Guatemala, Peru and India make their mark. Some of the campaigns we assessed set a real benchmark for their competitors through a clever use of insight and sophisticated execution, and will be talked about for years to come.”
Festival of Media Global founder and CEO of C Squared Charlie Crowe comments: “The Festival of Media Global Awards have always reflected the best media creativity from all over the world, and I’m pleased to see so many markets represented with campaigns that were not only strategically strong but also delivered unequivocally against a business’s bottom line. The media sector’s valuable contribution to the advertising industry is clear for us to see.”