Business

Saturday December 12, 2009

A sultry night for direct marketing

By EUGENE MAHALINGAM


Leo Burnett/Arc Worldwide the big winner at DMAM Awards

THERE has been a slew of annual award shows that honour marketing communications agencies this year, but the Direct Marketing Association of Malaysia (DMAM) Awards 2009 that was held on Dec 4 easily stood out from the rest.

The prestigious event took place in the heat of the night at the Sunway Lagoon Surf Beach, and you could see attendees clad in funky beach-wear!

The real highlight of the show was, of course, its winners. Just one month after picking up the Agency of the Year accolade and Golden Kancil at the Kancil Awards, Leo Burnett/Arc Worldwide scored big again by winning four golds at the DMAM Awards.

It was the biggest winner of the night. Leo Burnett/Arc Worldwide Malaysia & Singapore chief executive officer Tan Kien Eng says it was the “perfect ending to a truly remarkable year.”

“Our achievements at the DMAM Awards underscored our dedication to continuously raise the bar on creative standards that deliver effective solutions, in turn growing our clients’ market share.

“Not only that, this win also demonstrates our strengths in our other disciplines (besides mainstream advertising) and reaffirms our capabilities as an integrated communications agency,” he says.

Leo Burnett/Arc Worldwide won three golds for the HICOM-Chevrolet Sdn Bhd’s ‘’I almost starred in Transformers 2’’ campaign and a gold for Dutch Lady Milk Industries Bhd’s ‘’Yes! For the right to play’’ campaign.

HICOM-Chevrolet, one of the sponsors of the blockbuster movie Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, held an exclusive premiere for the motoring media and dealers.

To lure the crowd, Leo Burnett/Arc Worldwide developed highly-personalised invitations, which came in the form of storyboards from the movie.

The unexpected twist was that the storyboards depicted each media invitee as the original leading star of the movie! This quirky and humorous approach was a huge success. The media turned up in full force for the event, thrilled to see themselves up on the hit movie’s storyboard.

Leo Burnett/Arc Worldwide also netted five silvers, six bronzes and seven merit awards.

Meanwhile, OgilvyOne clinched two golds for IBM Asean’s ‘’Winning Chip’’ campaign while Creative Juice-Sil won a gold for Packet One Networks (M) Sdn Bhd’s ‘’Sudah Potong’’ campaign.

OgilvyOne Malaysia executive director Selina Ang says the campaign ran in six countries and was “a big win for a big brand.”

She says that the “Winning Chip” campaign had a tough business challenge – to convince chief investment officers (CIOs) to switch from the competition to IBM.

Ang says the campaign had “over-achieved” its targeted response by 300% after just one week.

“Every campaign has its own challenges. It’s how we overcome them that shows our pedigree,” she says.

OgilvyOne also won five silvers, 10 bronzes and four merit awards. Creative Juice-Sil also walked away with a silver award. A total of 65 awards were given out that night.

DMAM organising chairman and secretary Jason John says the show was held outdoors to give the event a more “relaxed and engaging environment.”

“This year’s awards were especially meaningful, as we raised the bar even higher with a number of firsts set for the industry,” he says, adding that there were a total of 200 entries from a record 14 agencies.

“This was also the first year that the DMAM Awards went digital,” John says.

According to him, a special digital-based system was created to allow online entry and evaluation.

DMAM president Sreedhar Subramaniam says most of the entries comprised digital-based campaigns.

“This was expected given the cost efficiency and convenient interactive nature of this platform,” he says.

Organised by Leo Burnett/Arc Worldwide Malaysia this year, the DMAM Awards has been heralded as Malaysia’s ‘blue-ribbon’ direct marketing awards show. The entries were judged by top officials from the creative arena.

The Trojan horse, which was instrumental in the Greeks’ victory over the Trojans, was adopted as the theme for this year’s awards.

“We wanted to highlight the positive side of the Trojan story by assuring agencies that what they do is impactful and can make a difference in their clients’ efforts to capture market share,” says John.

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