Faced with a number of sore heads from last night’s Media Week Awards, Lucy Aitken, Warc’s Case Study Editor, still managed to have a packed OMD reception in the palm of her hand as she kicked off the final day of Innovation Week.
After introducing the Warc Awards for Innovation that’s been running since 2012, Lucy highlighted the regular debate among their judges about what innovation actually means. There is no one definition the judges agree on, ranging from “ideas that have a technological element” to “moving the industry forward by doing something different”, and the trends that Lucy shared from this year’s Innovation Awards highlighted this.
We looked at four different themes:
- ‘Altruistic innovation’, where innovation does good for society. Examples included Vodafone Turkey’s inspiring app that addressed the issue of domestic violence in the nation and Project Akshar in Dubai, which graduated 5,000 Dubai labourers from blue-collar to white-collar.
- ‘The power of brands’ showed how brands have made a difference. Volvo’s now infamous life paint and UTEC’s plant lamp were perfect examples of this.
- ‘Data-driven innovation’ highlighted the incredible ways brands harnessed data to expand their message. Melbourne International Film Festival’s emotional trailer helped people feel films before they saw them and Toyota Hybrid found a unique way to overcome the issue of getting people to test drive cars
- Finally we looked at Slurpee’s Xpandinator, which grew sales by 21% YOY without dropping prices, as an amazing example of how ‘Innovation for Millenials’ is still vital in the advertising world.
Lucy was an inspiring speaker and her talk was a real treat for OMD and its partners as Innovation Week draws to a close today.
