The campaign was also a gold winner in the category Live Events & Activations & Direct Communication. Dominique Swiegers and Stephne de Villiers from King James expressed their delight and surprise at winning the Award: "We felt the competition was strong so when we won we were surprised, but pleasantly so". The two add that they had only entered into one category because they felt the campaign fitted so comfortably into that category.
Their brief was to develop collateral for Sanlam as the sponsor of the music festival that forms part of the annual Woordfees, which takes place in Stellenbosch. The collateral had to comprise banners and posters not only to make people aware that Sanlam sponsors the music festival, but also to drive them to the festival.
Given that the collateral would be part of a festival where there are already so many posters and banners, Swiegers and De Villiers felt this gave them the opportunity to do something more eye-catching. "With so many banners and posters, we felt that any poster would just get lost in the environment."
The first part of achieving this was to work with Sanlam's brand property of the 'Wealthsmith', a master in their craft. "We developed a campaign related to being a 'master crafter'. The raw material for Sanlam to create wealth is money, for music artists it is the words that make up their lyrics."
Therefore they used the words of songs to provide the copy for the campaign.
The second part of the campaign was to use installations instead of posters. "The installations spoke to the people in this environment, becoming an experience for the festival goers, and intriguing and inspiring people to attend the music festival in real time."
Both add that when they saw the comments of the judges in regard to this, they knew they had succeeded in their objective, especially in regard to the old world feel but modern edge of the campaign, as picked up by the judges.
Both felt that the campaign was a brave move by the client. "We were passionate about the campaign from its concept inception. The fact that the client also loved it from the word go was wonderful."
Last year, no Prestige Award was awarded. When addressing the Awards attendees on Friday evening, Japie Gouws, chairperson of the Awards and the MD of the ATKV, announced that this year not only had there been an increase in the number of entries into the Awards, but that the quality of the Awards was also "much higher than last year's". This was evident in the number of gold and silver Pendoring Awards handed out on the night, with a total of 50 given out.
While there was an increase in entries for the Afrikaans categories, the Truly South African categories saw a decline, and no Umpetha Award was given this year. This may have been because of confusion around the Truly South African categories at the beginning of the year, as Truly South African jury chairman Festus Masekwameng, who is Managing Partner at MKT Media and Executive Creative Director at Motherrussia Communications, explains.
Comments by the judges were mixed, with the print media and Out of Home (OOH) categories viewed as weak, while the radio category received postive feedback.
Other big winners included TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris, Johannesburg; Baie-Lingual Concepts; and Promise Brand Specialists, who all took two golds, while King James Group, Etiket and FCB Cape Town all took one gold. Joe Public received seven silver and FCB Cape Town, five.
The Stellenbosch Academy for Design and Photography also took home two golds while the AAA School of Advertising, Johannesburg, one; with the North-West University receiving five silvers.
Click here for the full winners' list and here a gallery of the night's big winners.
