Five WA radio ads shortlisted in Cannes – Meerkats leads the way with three for HBF
June 21 2010, 4:20 pm | | 19 Comments
Five Perth radio spots have made it through to the Shortlist stage in the Radio competition at the Cannes Lions Festival. Meerkats has three Shortlists and Marketforce and 303 have one each.
16 Aussie entries have made the cut out of 177 entries shortlisted worldwide.
The Radio Lions will be awarded Tuesday night. Perth’s five finalists are listed below:
CHAOS
HBF HEALTH INSURANCE
MEERKATS PERTH
SOUND OF NOTHING
HBF HEALTH INSURANCE
MEERKATS PERTH
YOUR PASSENGER
HBF HEALTH INSURANCE
MEERKATS PERTH
BREATHE
OFFICE OF ROAD SAFETY
ANTI DRINK-DRIVING MESSAGE
MARKETFORCE PERTH
LOSE YOUR LICENCE IN A FLASH
OFFICE OF ROAD SAFETY
SPEED LIMIT AWARENESS
303 PERTH
19 Comments
The social marketing ones are predicable enough so a doff of the hat to mf and 303. But a big slap on the back to Meekats for HBF. Looking forward to seeing how the excellent tv does with film jury. It is certainly very well-written and genuinely innovative for the sector and therefore more than worthy of another finalist or two.
6.10, you’re dreaming if you think HBF tv is going to do anything. Fantastic result for radio though. Well done Meerkats.
7.39
You sound like you might have some inside knowledge of the Cannes system, so you may be right. But – Budweiser apart – juries tire of seeing the same thing year-in, year-out and the hbf stuff genuinely drew a breath from those who saw it. Most banking investment and insurance tv stuff from around the world is still trying to make judges laugh (like the ANZ and Bingle ads out of DDB Melbourne), the hbf stuff is different enough in the sector to sneak through on the raw emotion ticket (along with Thai Life’s Que Sera Sera.)
I’m hoping the Kats take out something, building on a great year to date.
I hope you’re right 8.14. I’m not saying the tv is shit, just that I don’t think the jury will see it the same way you do. But if it wins an award I will be very happy for Kurt and the Kats.
Awesome, awesome result guys. I’m jealous as a bastard right now!
I could be wrong, but didn’t Mike Edmonds say years ago that Meerkats weren’t going to enter any work in award shows, and concentrate on great strategy for clients? I thought that’s what he said anyway. Can anyone clarify?
Yes, you are wrong 9:40.
Meerkats used to have a policy of not entering awards… except for Cannes.
They’ve changed that now but Cannes is still their priority. In fact they even set out a five year plan to win at Cannes a few years ago – starting from achieving a standard of work to enter through to winning Lions.
They did well last year and seem to be on track again this year so well done to them. And good luck to all 5 spots that made it through.
Kim
9.40 Do you wear a lot of green? Its very fashionable with some.
Congrats to all. Let’s hope something converts.
Thanks for clarifying. I wasn’t having a dig, just asking the question.
Fingers crossed for mf, longtail, market united and 303 at the cybers today
Kim,
Would you like to share your thoughts with us on why our press/print never gets anywhere at Cannes? We seem to do well enough at the other big shows but success in France is elusive. A lot of it could be put down to innovative media being a media lions category, and therefore subject to results data ( which rules out a number of executions which simply don’t have the client tracking). But many ads are put up in press, never to get shortlisted when other asian agencies do well. Do you think it is the ideas or the crafting? Should we be thinking of employing trained typographers or properly qualified heads or art to push the ads further? We seem to have cracked radio but more or less written off TV, so it would be useful to focus on print as an area for improvement.
woo for longtail!
Anyone got any idea why the 303 ors finalist is credited to 303 Sydney on the Cannes Website? I thought local government clients were supposed to be handled locally.
2:24 (sorry, I’ve been busy with our coverage on CB Asia site)
I think you’re on the right track. Our performance is definitely hampered by our lack of budgets, good photographers and, even more important, retouchers. If your idea is very visual you are going to need all these. And a great idea. Then you have to present and enter it correctly. My theory is we don’t spend nearly enough time and thought on each of these processes… the winners do.
Radio is definitely a level playing field but I’d hardly say we have cracked it. Silver and Gold are the only colours that count in the Radio Lions. I listened to every radio spot that won Bronze last year and most were terrible. Radio is the easiest category for us to target – for two reasons – Perth’s history of good radio writers and the fact that most of the top creative agencies in the world don’t write any radio. We should be getting multiple Lions each year in this category.
Kim.
Thanks for the wise words. Great to have just heard that Meerkats got silver for the HBF radio. That has to be good for both the agency and Perth
8.47
Relax my friend. The credit was an admin error. The script was handled/written/produced/spellchecked in Perth
7.39.
You were wrong. So very very wrong. Well done to HBF and Meerkats on not one but two film finalists.