As a new year dawns, it’s time to reflect on 2013 in The Drum’s New Year Honours – and what a year it was, as ‘Empty13’ fears were allayed with some of the best creative work ever produced emerging from the marketing industries.
Over the course of a week, we reveal The Drum’s pick of the top brands, campaigns, agencies and individuals to have made an impact over the course of the last 12 months. The full list is also published in The Drum’s 8 January issue, which is available to purchase here as of tomorrow.Here, we take a look at just a few of the categories featured in our New Year Honours list. The ‘work The Drum will cherish’ category highlights the creative work to have made a particular impact on the editorial team in 2013, while we also recognise the big ideas to emerge from 2013 and select our top choice for integrated campaign of the year.
Sony Xperia and Sony Bravia – McCann London
Work The Drum will cherishSony Xperia and Sony Bravia – McCann LondonMcCann London created not one but two awe-inspiring campaigns for Sony this year. The first, for Sony Mobile, launched in March 2013 promoting the Xperia Z smartphone.To showcase the dust and water resistant nature of the handset the campaign was shot on location at the Holi festival in India, where coloured powders and water are a mainstay of celebrations. The resulting campaign is an explosion of colour, energy and fun – just what we’ve come to expect of Sony campaigns.In November McCann London and Sony returned to our screens to promote the fine-detail and picture quality of its 4K televisions. Armed with 8m petals exploding from a volcano, a quiet Costa Rican village was engulfed in waves of colour in a commercial that will live alongside Sony’s epic earlier efforts where it unleashed thousands of coloured bouncing balls through the streets of San Francisco and exploded 70,000 litres of paint over a housing estate in Glasgow.
Guinness: ‘Made of More’ – BBDO New York
Work The Drum will cherishGuinness: ‘Made of More’ – BBDO New YorkA 60-second ad spot for Guinness created by BBDO New York showed us the true power of friendship when it launched in September. The interpretation of the brand’s ‘Made of More’ strapline features six guys playing an intense game of wheelchair basketball, with the narrator explaining, ‘the choices we make reveal the true nature of our character.’ The poignant twist in the ad turns the table on juvenile beer ads, presenting a group of athletic beer drinking men, defined by kindness as well as physical strength.
British Airways: ‘Look Up’ – Ogilvy 12th Floor
Work The Drum will cherishBritish Airways: ‘Look Up’ – Ogilvy 12th FloorIn November British Airways and Ogilvy 12th Floor looked to remind customers how exciting flying can be with a digital billboard that ‘interacts’ with the aircrafts flying overhead.Custom built surveillance technology tracks the aircraft and interrupts the digital display as it passes over to reveal the image of a child pointing at the plane overhead along with its flight number and destination it’s arriving from.The campaign draws on the conversations many of us have had with friends and family when we wonder where the planes overhead are going and dream of amazing holidays.
Vodafone: ‘The Kiss’ – Grey London
Work The Drum will cherishVodafone: ‘The Kiss’ – Grey LondonVodafone went time travelling with the help of its ad agency Grey London to dramatise the idea that ‘good things should last forever’, just like Vodafone’s unlimited talk and text package Vodafone Red. The 90-second film follows the same couple kissing through time, from childhood into their old age.This ad also takes The Drum’s gong for catchiest jingle of the year. Safe and Sound by American group Capital Cities might be a difficult one to shift from the stereos in our heads, but it took Vodafone’s involvement to propel this track, first released as a digital download in the US in 2011, into the charts.The ad won a Bronze Lion at Cannes 2013, and had another version with a much more sombre piano music accompaniment.
Playstation 4: ‘For the Players’ – 180 Amsterdam
Work The Drum will cherishPlaystation 4: ‘For the Players’ – 180 Amsterdam180 Amsterdam stripped PlayStation 4’s launch campaign back and targeted the brand’s original core demographic – video game players. Shunning the tactics used by rival console Xbox One, which positioned itself as an entertainment console, PS4 stuck its flag in the ground with the clear campaign message “For the Players” and targeted hardcore gamers.The social media campaign #4ThePlayers became a rallying cry for gamers everywhere, while the campaign laced in subtle nods and nuances that only true fans would really understand.
TUI – ‘Beer Plumbing’
Big ideas of the yearTUI – ‘Beer Plumbing’So a group of Aussie mates play a prank on their mate Russ by replumbing his house with 10 kegs of Tui’s beer – and watch his reaction on hidden camera. It was fun, it was clever, it made us want a pint. The video of the prank was then uploaded to the internet to amuse the world – and it did. We still want that pint.
Coca-Cola – ‘Small World Machines’
Big ideas of the yearCoca-Cola – ‘Small World Machines’ Coca-Cola no longer feels a need to advertise in the traditional sense, so it now attempts to place its branding against socially productive ideas, and this idea was definitely a brilliant one attempting to overcome the discord between India and Pakistan. The idea featured video vending machines that connected users in the two countries live and allowed them to trace patterns and communicate together while sharing a Coke. Clever and inspirational.
Coca-Cola – Share a Coke
Integrated campaign of the yearCoca-Cola – Share a CokeIn April, Coca-Cola launched its personalised Share a Coke campaign, which saw 150 of the UK’s most common names – from Aaron to Zoe – appear on bottles. Over the winter period, the campaign grew with consumers invited to ‘share a bottle with Santa’.However, the simple idea behind the campaign was not restricted to on-pack only: those who did not have one of the 150 names were able to create their own virtual can, as well as a tour which saw consumers able to get a personalised bottle. The campaign was further grown through social to mark major events, such as ‘share a Coke with Will and Kate’ following the birth of baby George.Yesterday we revealed those to have been named our best brands of 2013.
