Results don’t lie
Effie Awards
Issue 30 | March 2014
Agency
Whybin\TBWA Auckland
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer Toby Talbot Creative Directors Lisa Fedyszyn Jonathan McMahon Creatives Cece Chu Ryan Price Digital Director Ross Howard Creative Director Steve Kane Senior Designer Chris Lewis Designer Frank Turner Digital Creative David Minty Digital Producer Henson Tan Digital Developer David Colquhoun
Production Team
Group Head Jodi Willocks Senior Account Manager Victoria Meo Planner Sarah Hamburger
Other Credits
Client CEO, CAANZ Paul Head Events and Sponsorship Manager, CAANZ Kelly Gilkison
Date
September 2013
Background
The Effie Awards wanted more agencies than ever to enter the 2013 awards.
Idea
The advertising industry has always had an amazing ability to stretch the truth when entering work into creative award shows.
The Effie Awards, however, were different. Only work that achieved real business results for real clients brought home the metal.
So to encourage agencies to enter the 2013 Effie Awards in New Zealand, the country's top ECDs and CEOs were interviewed about their most 'successful' campaigns from the last year.
A police-trained polygraph examiner performed the interviews and lie- detector print-outs were made and mailed to Strategy Directors and planners in agencies, encouraging them to enter the 'truthful' awards.
Results
Obviously it was a complete success in every possible way.
Our Thoughts
Bill Bernbach said, “The most powerful element in advertising is the truth”, so I’m sure he’d never have stretched it when it came to an award entry! After reviewing so many campaigns with results for this issue, this is just brilliantly
funny, self deprecating and beautifully executed. Check out www.resultsdontlie. co.nz to see the films and the questions the creative luminaries had to answer that were so specific to them and their campaigns....I laughed out loud. You
can even test yourself. The truth is that advertising is about the work, the work, the work...that works, and this call for entry idea of ‘results don’t lie’ highlighted a principle all of us in the business should endorse, of handing out awards only to campaigns with real results.