The weekend is in sight and as well as celebrating the end of a long working week we have something a little bit more special to celebrate at Minerva House today.
We headed into the Newsworks Planning Awards with high hopes having been nominated 12 times and it’s fair to say that OMD UK didn’t disappoint! We absolutely dominated the awards proceedings winning 8, yes 8, awards and we couldn’t be more chuffed if we tried.
The media clan were in force to celebrate the stand-out campaigns that have run in newsbrands over the past year.
OMD UK took home:
Best Newspaper Campaign for our work on the McDonald’s Monopoly promotion, where we integrated display formats in The Sun and Metro to resemble a Monopoly board and aligned our ads with positive and engaging news content, proving to be one of McDonald’s most successful campaigns to date.
Best Content Partnership – to honour our work on the NSPCC Little Stars campaign. We coincided with the Oxford Street Christmas light switch on and launched a takeover of the Metro, featuring NSPCC lights throughout the pages. Metro collaborated with advertisers to create bespoke ad copy and 10% of the advertising revenue from the edition was donated to the NSPCC.
Best Newsbrand Campaign – for the creation of the San Miguel Rich List with the Guardian, which celebrated people who are rich in experiences, stories and adventure- as an alternative to The Sunday Times’ Rich List which is based on material wealth.
We also won highly commended for:
Best Content Partnership – for our work on the Heinz Seriously Good Mayonnaise. Heinz and OMD teamed up with The Telegraph for a new campaign focused on quality. Heinz wanted to continue the momentum behind its latest product and demonstrate why it is worth paying more for good quality. The Guardians credibility when it comes to food made along with its huge reach that encapsulates the 25-44 ABC1 audience made it the perfect partner.
Effectiveness award – was awarded to OMD for the easyJetSpanish Routes campaign. OMD and easyJet teamed up with the Evening Standard to inspire people to travel to Spain for a spontaneous summer holiday. During the Summer of 2016 easyJet had too many unsold seats to key destinations therefore the campaign objective was to drive consideration and position easyJet as the gateway to these places.
Omnimedia award– for our work on the Channel 4 Humans 2 campaign. For the launch, Channel 4 and OMD used newsbrands to promote the series with a campaign that blurred fiction and reality. Understanding that newsbrands are effective in getting a message out quickly, Channel 4 and OMD used the platform to trick the audience by using fake print ad to launch the campaign.
Omnimedia award – NSPCC Little Stars
We ended the night on an ultimate high winning the GRAND PRIX Chair’s award for our NSPCC Little Stars Campaign.
Here’s what Zaid Al-Qassab, Chief Brand and Marketing Officer at BT Group had to say about the campaign:
“The chair’s award this year goes to a campaign that had fantastic audience insight, really clever use of context, amazing creativity and was not just in newsbrands but took an omnichannel approach.”
This truly was our night!
This award-winning work is a brilliant reflection on the potential newsbrands have in this modern media landscape to deliver effective campaigns. In their own right, news platforms can be an amazing platform for brands and advertisers, giving the industry the opportunity to take a highly innovative approach and unlock really creative ways to better connect with audiences.
We are absolutely delighted to have won these awards for five different clients and as ever are proud of the work that went into these campaigns to make them such a success. Congratulations to everyone involved. Bring on next year!
Take a look at the winning campaigns here.
