FCB, OMD, Carat, MBM shine at Beacons

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A sell-out crowd of around 1000 of New Zealand’s leading media personalities came together to celebrate the industry’s best work from the past year at the 2016 CAANZ Beacons Awards in association with NZME at the Viaduct Events Centre last night.

FCB Media dominated the night, taking out the supreme award for Best in Show with their Using Mobile to own a Moment campaign for Maritime NZ (awarded a Gold in Best Use of Mobile).

Surprisingly there were two winners for advertiser of the year with FCB client the Ministry of Social Development and OMD client Frucor Beverages both crowned as joint winners (having picked up numerous category awards during the night).

“It has been a very strong year for the Gold awards, which resulted in a really close decision from the international judges for Best in Show,” said Beacons convenor of judges Derek Lindsay.

One international judge commented that overall, the Gold entries were some of the best media thinking he’d ever seen. He was seriously and repeatedly impressed with these papers – “they oozed intelligence and creativity,” the judge said.

“In particular, the Best in Show is an outstanding advertising idea which harnesses and complements the power of mobile. From both a contextual and technological perspective this idea is simple, innovative and wonderful.”

FCB Media took out nine Golds and 11 Silvers through their campaigns for the Ministry of Social Development, Audi, Maritime NZ, Foodstuffs New World, the NZ Fire Service, the Health Promotion Agency, Flight Centre and European Motor Distributors.

OMD NZ also shone, taking home three Golds and two Silvers for their collaborative work with BEAT and MediaWorks for Frucor Beverages’ Jono V Ben. OMD also won four Silvers for Air New Zealand and another Silver for McDonald’s.

Carat and MBM rounded out the Golds for the night, for their campaigns for ASB Bank and Loyalty New Zealand respectively.

Continuing their clean sweep, FCB Media were awarded CAANZ Media Agency of the Year for their outstanding work throughout the year. Media Agency of the Year is an entered category judged on the merits of the business over a calendar year. The award takes into account business vision, employee development, financial performance, client acquisition and development, industry contribution and creativity and innovation rather than the traditional way of who won the most metal on the night. This was judged by a panel of independent business people and auditors.

Matt Bale from MBM won the Sandy Smith Inspiring Individual Award with Annabelle Wilkinson, group business director of MBM, acknowledging him in a tribute video as “extremely charismatic and an amazing mentor”.

Mel Homer, radio host extraordinaire was an excellent MC, with Spy’s Ricardo Simich providing some light-hearted fashion commentary with the Purple Carpet Report.

The Hipstamatics played during the show giving the evening a live feel and the crowd also saluted some of the winners from previous years who re-appeared to hand over the trophies to 2016’s winners.

The Executive Judges joined in the on-screen celebrations by explaining to TVNZ Mastermind host Peter Williams why each Gold clearly deserved to win their award.

The 2016 Beacon Awards were held in association with NZME, and were also sponsored by TVNZ, Sky, The Radio Bureau, Nielsen, Near Media, Bauer Media, ISite/QMS Media, MediaWorks and Soar Print.

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