The Campaign

More and more award shows appear on the Advertising award landscape every year, and agency creatives want to enter them all. The challenge is in reality, creatives don't decide how much and what can be entered. It's the agency's award show budget. Something that lives well outside the creative realm and deep inside the financial one. It was time to change Australasian AWARD's audience, and speak to those that actually control the agency purse strings. So for the first time in ad history, we created a call for entries titled 'Pencils Equal Profits' that spoke directly to agency Finance Directors, instead of Creative Directors. The campaign reached a climax, when we announced a Finance Director could actually experience winning an Award Pencil for themselves - with the Pinstripe Pencil. Awarded for the first time, for best 'Return On Investment' from their agency's entries

Success of the Campaign

By speaking to a completely new audience, that is, the agency people who actually control the money, 'Pencils Equal Profits' created a remarkable 27% increase in AWARD entries for 2013. It resulted in the 1st advertising award ever being created for Finance Directors so they could actually experience winning for themselves. Something that on the surface seems amusing but also perfectly taps into an unspoken tension between the different departments of advertising agencies. And finally, maybe just maybe, as a result of the campaign, we've made Finance realise, that timesheets aren't the only thing worth entering.

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

For the first time in ad history, we created a 'Call for Entries' that spoke directly to agency Finance Directors, instead of Creative Directors. Titled 'Pencils Equal Profits', it included online video content, edms, financial press ads, and an entire book on Award Entry Economics. Every aspect of the communication humourously demonstrated how entering AWARD not only could result in remarkable cost efficiencies, but also vast increases in client billings. The campaign reached a climax, when we announced a Finance Director could actually experience winning an Award Pencil for themselves - with the Pinstripe Pencil. Awarded for best 'Return On Investment' on an agency's entries. The AWARD presentation night itself became part of the campaign, as Finance Directors grew excited about the prospect of getting on stage collecting metal. And the only way that was going to happen - was entering more into the AWARD award show.