Havas Boondoggle scoops gold, silver and the Best in Show at the 2017 MMA Smarties

Speaking of the awards, Havas Boondoggle Managing Director Boyd Roberts said, “We are very pleased with the awards we received last night. They are a nod to our evolved approach to work and the dynamic teams we have within the Havas Village. They are one of the proof points that ‘smashing’ silos and disciplines, working with a flat, seamlessly integrated structure rewards with great results from both a business and a brand-building perspective. For us at Havas, that is the way of working that future-proofs the businesses we work on.”

The award wins are all for The Big O, a campaign done for condom brand Durex. The campaign won the Best in Show Award, which was the award that recognised the agency brand with the most scores from all their winning work. The other four awards were gold for Marketing Strategy: Brand Awareness, Marketing Strategy: Lead Generation and Media Strategy: Mobile Social categories, and silver for the Media Strategy: Mobile Website category.

Havas Boondoggle Creative Director Angie Hattingh said of the awards wins, “This campaign presented a number of challenges for us. We had to achieve a lot with a little. Having a campaign that used live data to drive its messaging into social was a risky solution, but we worked smart, leveraging behavioural and cultural insights. Working with Durex is always fun and we had a great time challenging ourselves.”

The Big O campaign introduced Durex to seven African markets, and got them, along with three of the condom brand’s existing African markets, totalling ten, to engage with the brand and purchase its products. Durex built on the ‘national spirit’ that was sweeping the world during a major sporting event in 2016, and turned sex into a sport. Participating countries were challenged to showcase why they are Africa’s greatest lovers, with the mandate to ‘do it’ for their country. Witty content that blurred the lines between sport and sex was shared and drove the campaign. Over three weeks, Nigeria, South Africa, Angola, Kenya, Ghana, Botswana and other countries one-upped each other, engaging on Facebook, Twitter and a mobi-site. An orgasm leaderboard was used to track engagement, linking to sales, and over 230,000 people visited the campaign microsite, the challenge video was viewed over 2.3 million times with an engagement rate of just over 14%. In total, across all campaign elements, the campaign had over 158 million impressions, reached over 21 million people, with 3.1 million people in total, engaging, and resulted in a 37% increase in sales.

The Big O Campaign Case Study: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ6cjrDnoGM.

The MMA Smarties™ strives to recognise and celebrate fresh campaigns in mobile marketing. This year, the awards programme also included marketing content for mobile from industry verticals ranging from automotive, food and drink, retail, entertainment, electronics, health and beauty, and sports.