AMVBBDO UK Earns AME Best of Show and Regional Platinum – Europe
Regional Platinum Awards go to UNICEF, Overman South Korea – FP7McCann MENAT
New York Festivals® AME Awards®, world-wide since 1994, announced the 2020 award winners.
With a 21% increase over last year’s entries, this year’s international AME Awards Grand Jury awarded the following: AME Best of Show (Grand Award) 4 Regional AME Platinum Awards, 23 Gold AME Awards, 35 Silver AME Awards, 27 Bronze and 24 AME Finalist Certificate Awards. For a complete list of all of 2020’s award-winning entries, visit award winners.
Europe
AMVBBDO United Kingdom earned 2020 AME Best of Show (Grand Award) and the AME Regional Platinum – Europe for “Viva La Vulva” for client Libresse. The campaign broke conventions about intimate products and changed how women thought about these products and themselves. With £0 media support, the film had over 5 million organic views, gained 96% positive comments on social media and just 5 weeks after the launch Libresse gained market share reaching 33%. “Viva La Vulva” earned a second AME Award.
AMVBBDO’s “Guinness Clear. Why Guinness dared to tell everyone to drink water.” received 2 Gold AME Awards. The campaign, created for the brand’s multi-million-pound sponsorship of The Six Nations international rugby tournament, succeeded in taking the pressure off drinking while paying dividends back to the brand. Guinness become the #1 beer brand associated with responsible drinking and provided the highest profit ROI of any Guinness rugby campaign in GB (8.2) and Ireland (21.25) and surpassing the targeted 5-7% to volume uplift across GB and Ireland.
“There can be no greater accolade in advertising marketing effectiveness than the Advertising Marketing Effectiveness awards. And, quite literally, no greater accolade at the Advertising Marketing Effectiveness awards than Best In Show. We could not be any more proud than we are now of the work for Libresse and Guinness that has achieved this. It’s brave work, that works. Which matters now more than ever.”— Bridget Angear & Craig Mawdsley, Joint Chief Strategy Officers, AMVBBDO
Serviceplan Group Germany earned the AME Gold Award for “LIFEBOAT – The Experiment” for client Sea-Watch. To regain awareness and media coverage for the crisis and rescue organization Sea-watch, journalists from Germany’s biggest newspaper were invited to participate in a simulation to create empathy about the refugee experience. Results— pickup by all major German news-channels and international press from China to Canada and +1100 articles were published reaching half a billion people, tripling website traffic and increasing brand interaction by 310% all without spending a single euro in media.
For a complete list of all of 2020’s award-winning entries, visit award winners.
Asia Pacific
Overman South Korea was honored with the AME Regional Platinum Award – Asia Pacific for “100 Words Pain_ting” for Save the Children. The campaign fought verbal abuse and increased Save the Children’s presence as a children’s rights NGO by featuring paintings created by children that illustrated hurtful words in an online exhibition and 31 offline exhibitions in 15 cities. The experiential campaign inspired change and garnered 45 million earned media impressions, a 1.55 million exhibition audience. A 5933% surge in site traffic saw the brand top of mind jump from 4th to 2nd raising the brand more than 200%. “100 Words Pain_ting” earned 3 additional AME Gold Awards and 4 AME Silver Awards.
“Overman is over the moon and very honoured to receive such prestigious AME awards for the 100 Word Pain_ting project. The project was not only wonderful to work on, but also gave back so much to the society. Thank you to the judges at AME for bestowing this award on Overman and inspiring our company in continuing the journey of greatness.”—Seung Eun Jang, CEO/Chief Creative Director, Overman South Korea
VMLY&R Sydney’s “McPickle: our most successful social moment, without spending a cent” for McDonalds earned the AME Gold Award. A single video of the “McPickle” was posted on Facebook and Instagram with zero media spend, showcasing an absurd number of pickles and stipulating that it was “available until yesterday. The April Fool’s prank resulted in over 500 million impressions equivalent to more than $12 million of PR value and $4 million in advertising.
McCann Health China was honored with the AME Gold Award for Breath of Life for client SmithGlaxoKline. COPD is one of the main causes of death in China, out of 100 million sufferers less than 15% get properly diagnosed. Collaborating with a Pulmonologist and a popular Chinese blowing-ink artist a patented COPD self-test awareness tool was created that was downloadable via WeChat. Registering 70% on the awareness tools alerts users to undergo a check-up. In the one-month pilot, 10,000 people used the mini program.
Middle East & Africa
FP7 McCann MENAT’s “Blood Unity” earned the AME Regional Platinum Award – Middle East & Africa for client Donner Sang Compter (DSC), the Lebanese NGO that promotes voluntary blood donation. On the Day of Ashura, DSC got Imams to talk about an alternative to commemorate the occasion and encourage more people to become donors, innovating a thousand-year-old ritual of bloodletting into one of blood-giving. Results— Blood donations in Lebanon hit a national record with 655 blood units collected; 400% more than what is expected. Donated blood units saved 1,965 lives. The new ritual for Ashura received endorsement from religious and spiritual Shia Imams and set the foundation for the first National Blood Bank.
“Work that works in solving problems and delivering on objectives, gives our industry a purpose and a reason for being. As an agency, we have focused on creative effectiveness as a key pillar. So, it’s really exciting and we are very grateful to the organizers and jurors for awarding our work with top honours at the AME Awards. And very pleased for us to continue to earn the MENA region its much-deserved recognition.” —Tahaab Rais, Regional Head of Strategy & Truth Central, FP7 McCann MENAT.
FP7 McCann also earned AME Gold Awards for “The Ramadan campaign that didn’t launch in Ramadan” for client Jawwy and “The Astronomical Sale” for Mastercard.
North America
UNICEF’s “Backpack Graveyard” received the AME Regional Platinum – North America for their award-winning campaign to bring global attention to children killed in conflict zones. Prior to the UN’s 74th General Assembly, UNICEF installed 3,758 backpacks all plotted on the UN lawn to resemble an Arlington cemetery type graveyard to bring attention to their senseless deaths. The installation garnered more than 400 media articles and broadcasts globally and over 300,000 engagements on social media and reached a combined audience of over 1.1 billion without any media spend.
“An idea alone is just that. It takes a great Brand, an entire village and a relentless spirit of getting things done to make it a reality and that is where I am the most proud of UNICEF’s efforts behind this internally conceived & executed idea.”
“We are thrilled to be recognized by the prestigious New York Festivals AME Awards and are so grateful that the Backpack Graveyard idea has had the strength and boldness to continue to gain recognition on a global scale in order to highlight the important work we do across the world, day in, day out in over 190 countries & territories – and importantly, the reason why we do it. For every child, a future.” –Angus Ingham, Special Projects and Partnerships lead UNICEF Headquarters NYC
Razorfish earned two Gold AME Awards for Project #ShowUs for Dove. The campaign features 5,000+ photographs of women from 39 countries. Dove acted with Getty Images and Girlgaze to create Project #ShowUs, the world’s largest stock photo library created by women to shatter beauty stereotypes by showing women as they are, not as others believe they should be. Results—100,000+ women worldwide supported the collection and 1,300+ companies in 40+ countries have downloaded 15,000+ images from the collection.
Zulu Alpha Kilo’s Gold winning “Big in Japan” for client SingleCut Beersmiths, employed mobile media for their campaign for the debut of SingleCuts new beer in Japan, Big in Japan IPA. The Spotify-enabled beer featured QR codes designed as clues for classic rock songs in a name-that-tune game. Results—promoted social media assets garnered the brand’s highest level of consumer engagement to date, resulting in four times the usual response level and the Spotify playlists received over 5,000 unique visits and Big in Japan IPA sold out within two weeks of the release. Zulu Alpha Kilo’s also earned Gold AME Awards for “#PauseToRemember” (HomeEquityBank), “#UnravelHate” (Peace Collective), and Mix ‘N’ Match (KitchenAid Small Appliances).
Starcom’s “Do What You Can’t Jimmy Fallon” for Samsung Galaxy S10 scored two Gold AME Awards for their campaign featuring “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” visiting his favorite places around New York with guest celebrities and musicians while shooting an entire episode on Samsung’s Galaxy S10+. Results— a 13% increase in Galaxy S10 phone orders during the broadcast on Monday, March 25th, plus the days following saw a 31% higher order conversion rates than average and the episode was viewed 6 million+ times across platforms.
VMLY&R earned the AME Gold Award for “The Runaway Pub” for New Balance. A sponsorship of the London Marathon set out to establish New Balance as a true “runners’ brand” by opening a runners-only pub in the months leading up to the race where the only currency accepted was miles run. 279,000+ runners participated in the app challenges—nearly seven times the number of runners in the actual marathon and nearly ten times New Balance’s benchmark. More than 23,000 runners, over half the number in marathon, added The Runaway pub card to their wallet. VMLY&R also received the AME Gold for “LaughTracker” for Tennessee Tourism.
The results of the jury are parsed in an annual rankings brief, The AME Report- a creative ranking system based on overall points earned for winning entries and provides an account of the highest-ranking agencies and brands within this year’s competition.
To thank all the dedicated workers on the front line of the epidemic AME will be making a donation to Doctors Without Borders in the name of the 2020 Best of Show Winner, AMVBBDO & Libresse.
About the AME Awards® for Advertising & Marketing Effectiveness™: Founded in 1994, the AME Awards honors international work that demonstrates ground-breaking solutions to challenging marketing problems.