IAB Creative Showcase

Contagious spent last Thursday evening at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Creative Showcase Awards, celebrating the best of British digital and online work from 2008.The award winners were dominated by AKQA, who claimed Agency of the Year, not to mention the Most Contagious Award for Fiat eco:Drive. Contagious editorial director, Paul Kemp-Robertson, explained that the work had been selected because ‘it has a practical application for the real world that can genuinely improve the lives of the people that use it, not to mention the environment’. AKQA completed its hat trick, also scooping Microsoft Advertising’s Most Innovative Campaign Award for Nike Bootcamp. Daniel Bonner, chief creative officer at AKQA told Contagious: ‘We relish the monthly challenge of the IAB creative showcase - it has us biting our nails twelve times a year. The expertise of the judges means that we can submit ground breaking work, confident they are able to understand creativity that goes beyond the browser or the banner.’ Poke claimed the Creative Showcase Grand Prix for its impressively original Balloonacy campaign for Orange and the IAB’s Unthink Your Brand Award went to Talk Talk and Treehouse for The Forever Story. Attendees were also treated to a talk from Alex Evans, founder of Media Molecule, developer behind of PlayStation 3’s LittleBigPlanet. Evans took us through the three years of the games’ development and why he sees gaming becoming increasingly social and creative, as well as the difficulties of promoting a highly complex game. (The Japanese take went down particularly well http://playstation.joystiq.com/2008/10/15/ad-japan-in-panic-over-littlebigplanet-release/)

Evans told Contagious ‘as someone from outside the internet marketing and advertising world (I guess I’m a client-of-a-client!), it was lovely to be able to find the overlap between our creative processes; my personal favourite was the Grand Prix winner, whose virtual ballooning campaign’s playfulness really chimed with the little kid in me. It’s so great (and rare!) to remember to be playful and actually enjoy the creative process. It seemed that Poke, and many of the other people I met, felt the same way.’ The evening was not only retrospective, challenging creatives to meet new problems that economic climate poses. David Pugh-Jones, brand strategist, creative solutions at Microsoft Advertising, wrapped up the night saying: ‘During difficult times the cream always rises to the top, so this is the best year for you to be creating the best possible creative work.’ Bonner echoes these sentiments, explaining ‘The UK digital industry is a great place to be right now - it challenges itself, as well as complacent advertising agencies, to innovate on different level. The next year is going to be about integration and proliferation of digital marketing into in the products we use in the real world. We will look to continue to invent new formats and ways to connect brands with the audience and transcend the divide between marketing and product whereby customers will see the benefit and not the format.’ http://creativeshowcase.net/