DraftFCB's 'What’s My Number?' wins at CAANZ

An ad agency campaign so successful it helped lower power prices has taken top honours.

DraftFCB’s work on the Electricity Authority’s campaign What’s My Number was declared 2012 Best in Show at the CAANZ Media Awards, held in Auckland last night.

The campaign has already been a major winner at the RSVP and Nexus awards and last month it won the 2011 Yahoo! New Zealand Digital Strategy Award.

Mark Jenner, 2012 Media Awards convener of judges and head of digital at Telecom, said What’s My Number? earned the top title and four gold awards due to its outstanding media integration.

“The DraftFCB team drew on consumer insights to achieve a huge cut through in a tough market – simply put; it was a really clever media strategy that rallied action from consumers,” Mr Jenner said.

The campaign drove more than 400,000 users online to re-evaluate their power companies, resulting in the overall electricity market prices decreasing in response.

Other big winners included MediaWorks TV’s Four, which was awarded Media Brand of the Year, to recognise its success in establishing its brand over the past year.The judges said Four had been effective in building both a strong audience and the faith of advertisers and agencies over a short timeframe.

Client of the Year waent to Neeraj Lala, assistant general manager of Toyota. Mr Lala was commended for the strategic, insightful and fresh way he has championed the agency-client relationship.

The 2012 Inspiring Individual Award was jointly awarded to Alistair Jamison, chief executive of Starcom and ViVaki NZ and Liz Fraser, general manager, MSN. The judges believed both Mr Jamison and Ms Fraser demonstrated outstanding passion and commitment to building great teams and equally deserved the title for 2012.

International judge Anna Chitty of agency PHD USA said she was impressed by the quality of thinking in the local market.

“The entries were brilliant – the New Zealand industry is thriving!” she said.

CAANZ media committee chairman Derek Lindsay, who is also managing director of the victorious DraftFCB, said the 233 award entries showed the talent within the local industry and highlighted how media strategies can benefit business performance.

“The media awards recognise and celebrate great thinking, great execution and great results for our clients,” he said.