Gold to Meerkats, &Partners and Marketforce at 2018 PADC Skulls; Jester’s ‘Angus In A Pie’ radio wins SCA’s The White Horse; St John Ambulance ‘Life Goes On’ TVC awarded Best of Show
Meerkats emerged as the big winner at the 2018 PADC Skulls presented on Friday night. The agency’s Life Goes On TVC for St John Ambulance won Gold in Film and Television, and was named Best of Show.
Meerkats also won the other major prize of the night, taking out the White Horse Award, the renamed Southern Cross Austereo Radio Writers Award. Angus for Jester’s won the award, and the $20,000 cash prize for its creators Anneliese Sullivan, Rikki Burns and Josh Edge. Overall, Meerkats enjoyed one of its strongest performances at The Skulls, but it was a bittersweet night for Edge, co-creator of both pieces of work, who has recently been let go as Creative Director by the agency.
In contrast to last year’s Gold rush, only three Gold Skulls were awarded this year – one of the toughest on record.
Marketforce won 1 Gold with its The R Word social media campaign for Avivo, which has already performed well internationally including picking up a Bronze Lion at Cannes this year.
&Partners won the night’s third Gold Skull with its Free Benji online film for Nature Play.
Chairman of Judges Nkanyezi Masango, Creative Director at King James Cape Town, said the jury awarded Gold Skulls to work they considered truly world-class and capable of winning internationally.
Download the complete list of winners here: TheSkulls_2018_Winners_and_Finalists.pdf
The night was brilliantly MC’d by comedian/writer/activist Nazeem Hussain, whose interaction with the audience made for some great laughs while he kept the presentation humming along.
An honourable mention also to Southern Cross Austereo’s Aussie Moore, who delivered the acceptance speech of the night when The Studio at SCA won Silver for its Copyright Infringement radio ad for WAAPA. (Incidentally, Copyright Infringement recently won Gold at the London International Awards, but was only good for Silver at The Skulls. Told you it was tough!)
It was the last Skulls for PADC President Mark Braddock and Vice-President James Hawkes, who are stepping down after 5 years. It has been a highly successful tenure by the duo, which has seen the PADC stabilise its financial position and develop some important industry partnerships. However, in his opening address, Braddock said there were still challenges ahead for the new leadership to keep it a vibrant and relevant part of the changing communications industry.
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6 Comments
Is there a full list of winners available online?
Meerkats – Josh and Anneliese leaving means the winners are walking out of the door.
Marketforce – Joe and Alida have left. Lauren is just about to. Ben and Pat left ages ago.
Very few of the big winners either no longer work at the agencies where they produced the work or are about to leave. No matter what anyone says the people mentioned here were the ones that drove the work. It will be interesting to see how these agencies perform next year….
Well done to &Partners. Dav and Bryan are still there!
….pretty sure Ben Derham, Chris Andrawes and Neil Martin would have a lion shaped something to say about that.
“Im staying put” – once you’ve been in this industry for a while you’ll understand people come and go, creatives come and go and clients come and go – it’s the nature of the beast in this industry.
Well done to all finalists and winners – was a fun night
@I’m staying put
Yup, there’s been a lot of changes at a few agencies. Lauren left a good month ago, btw.
Mitch Mitchell is still at SCA and still kicking arse. There’s a stayer.
And yes, bloody well done to Dav & Bryan. Both still staying put.
As for me, and the R Word, it took a lot of work from a lot of people. David Thomas was up on stage, too. Rightfully so. Lenny Rudeberg shot the videos and Claire Baronas produced them. Johanna Gibb, Ruby Broun and Nik Cik hustled in the account service department. Brad Habib did the sound. If you’re going to call out names, you gotta call them all (which, ironically, I failed to do on Friday night. My bad).
It may only take one or two people to think of a decent idea, but it almost always takes a team to turn that idea into something real, not to mention something award-worthy.
Trouble with teams of people is that there’s a lot of moving parts. Constantly moving parts, with full schedules and other projects. And getting all those parts to work together, with the same urgency and drive and motivation, can be tricky. But it’s ultimately worth it when you’re making something you believe in.
Just ask anyone that won anything on the night. Not sure there were many one-man-band winners, from memory. Everything required a good degree of teamwork and collaboration.
So good on everyone that won for work they were involved with. It’s a creative award show, for work that gets created. And that takes a lot of people.
May I add my congratulations to all winners and finalists at the recent PADC Awards
A couple of other things:
Firstly, the industry owes a debt pf gratitude to Mark and James for their stewardship of the PADC over the past five years. No doubt, theirs has been a tough and sometimes thankless task.
Secondly, while Joe’s comments are entirely appropriate, it is my view that while those creating the winners are rightly applauded, it is their deeds for which the PADC Awards were conceived. At least, that was the spirit back in 1989 when they were inaugurated.
Their purpose back then was to enhance the standards of the West Australian output.
That they continue to serve this objective is to me, remarkable.
That, and 2019 will be their thirtieth year serving this role.
John Ilian.