The Drum editorial team’s favourite Chip Shop Awards entries
The winners of the Chip Shop Awards – the only creative awards with no rules – will be announced as part of The Drum’s Can-Do Festival, which takes place on 19 June. Here, The Drum’s editorial team look through this year’s nominations and highlight their own personal favourites. You can register now if you’d like to attend the Chip Shop Awards virtual ceremony.
Dani Gibson, digital media producer
Category: Best Retail
Agency: Brand & Deliver
Client: Cushelle
Cushelle is well known for its cuddly, sweet, Koala mascot Kenny. But at least 25,000 koalas are thought to have perished in the recent Australian bushfire. Brands have the opportunity to effectively execute ideas that will tackle serious issues that have a major impact on life. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. Especially if it looks like it was just done to fill their bottom lines. If this had actually ran, it would have been a great example of a brand with purpose. Solving a problem creatively, while having an obvious link to the issue at hand, it is straight to the point and pulls right on your sense of morality. How can you not be upset that all of Kenny’s friends and family are on the brink of endangerment?
John McCarthy, senior online reporter
Category: Best Ad Without a Visual
Agency: STV Creative
Client: Organ Donation Scotland
I love the idea of grabbing (relevant) attention with just a slither of copy on a billboard that people have trained themselves not to look at. ’Be a heartless bastard (bitch)’ is risky but, with the righteousness of the cause behind it, its crassness is excused. I’d love to see this one in the wild. And I bet it’d work.
Cameron Clarke, head of content
Category: Best Shop Window Post Card
Agency: Stack
Client: NHS
The Chip Shop Awards are full of big ideas, but sometimes it’s the little ones that are the most powerful, like this NHS postcard from Stack. Surrounded – at a distance – by a bunch of jostling services, this simple execution is a timely reminder of why we all must continue to do our bit.
Rebecca Stewart, trends editor
Category: Best Food and Drink
Agency: BBDO
Client: McDonald’s
When a very smug series of ads from Burger King used pictures of a decaying Whopper burger to highlight the fast food chain’s aversion to preservatives launched earlier this year, they divided the ad industry. Some called the campaign genius, while others said it turned their stomach. The ads riffed off the urban legend that a McDonald’s Big Mac is seemingly imperishable. However, in a lockdown situation people have been desperate to get their hands on a dirty burger, and with the Golden Arches closed it’s been impossible. This cheeky creative hits the nail on the head: the longer the shelf life at the moment, the better. Maccas emerges as the winner.
Stephen Lepitak, executive editor
Category: Best Use of Ambient
Agency: Miami Ad School
Client: Netflix
You may have seen this campaign devised by two students from the Miami Ad School already, as it went viral when first posted online. Like all good Chip Shop entries, it’s a brilliant idea that tells the story of the times. It raises a smile and makes you think at the same time that Netflix should have bought it and done it for real too – go out at your own risk and have Narcos spoiled in the process. Lovely.
Ellen Ormesher, editorial assistant
Category: Best Press
Agency: Tribal DDB London
Client: Nivea
Sensitive skin needs to be protected, and Nivea’s 0% alcohol moisturiser is up for the job. This print campaign cleverly riffs on the ‘sensitive content’ filter we often see digitally, making use of a frosted foldout panel to reveal the ad underneath.
Thomas O’Neill, managing editor
Category: Best Use of Ambient
Agency: Alice and Lara
Client: Camden Council
Alice and Lara’s solution to a shit storm in Camden was to surround the offending droppings with child-like drawings and remind pet owners that kids use pavements too. A great use of ambient media requiring nothing more than a piece of chalk, it is sure to gross out and change the bad habits of many a dog lover.
Sam Bradley, assistant editor
Category: Best Retail
Agency: M&C Saatchi
Client: Dreams Beds
Poking your rivals is a hard trick to pull off. But this entry on behalf of bedmaker Dreams playfully needles its bedfellow in the pinewood-and-spring business, Ikea, for its flatpacks and famously inscrutable schematics, reminding reluctant handymen and women that they needn’t always DIY. Leaving the umlauts and Allen keys alone might give you a better night’s sleep after all.
Shawn Lim, APAC reporter
Category: Best Fake News
Agency: Don’t be Shy
Client: Huawei
As a Chinese brand, Huawei is constantly accused of espionage, especially when it comes to 5G. This entry shows an image of a round Earth from space, perhaps in reference to the ’flat earth theory’. It is asking people not to believe everything they read in the media and draw their own conclusions.
Chris Sutcliffe, editor, The Drum Network
Category: Best Parody
Agency: Leli and Coco
Client: Coca-Cola
You can’t call advertising ’art’ unless it can be used for satire. Coke might not like the use of its iconic colours and ribbon but, as Leli and Coco point out, us consumers might not like that the soft drinks giant rolled back its commitment to recycling and green policies. Pricking the ego of the powerful by mimicking them? Now that’s art.
See the full list on nominations on the Chip Shop Awards website, and join us on Friday 19 June when we announce the winners as part of The Drum’s Can-Do Festival.