Yahoo! New Zealand announces overall winner of its Digital Strategy Awards

DraftFCB is the  overall  winner  of the 2011 Yahoo! New Zealand Digital Strategy Awards held in Auckland last night.

DraftFCB’s Electricity Authority Consumer Switching campaign took out the competition with its  powerful digital strategy that  succeeded in generating mass awareness and conversations about domestic power prices in New Zealand.

“DraftFCB developed a highly  involved campaign that engaged consumers into taking one simple step to find out their savings number,” says Laura Maxwell-Hansen, General Manager of Yahoo! New Zealand. ”While all four entries demonstrated outstanding digital thinking,  DraftFCB had a  distinctive digital strategy  that allowed them to  ultimately change consumer behaviour and public opinion.”

The winning campaign asked the simple question “What’s your number?” to encourage  consumers to switch electricity providers if they could get a better deal. Tailored creative ran across a full range of Digital Channels including search, social media, mail, publisher and e-commerce websites. The campaign generated mass conversation about domestic power prices in New Zealand and how much people could save if they changed
companies.

Digital not only provided the mechanism for consumers to complete a power price calculation, but it  also  allowed them to achieve maximum engagement by delivering relevance, talkability and encouraging action across key sites and social media.

The campaign recognised the importance of activating a core “savvy shopper” group who were higher electricity consumers and therefore stood a lot to gain. This group then helped spread the word and in essence became a key channel themselves.

As a result, consumers switching power companies increased by 48%, with over 87,000 people changing providers in June and July alone. Providers also became more competitive and look-a-like retention campaigns were created.

“What stood out with the Consumer Switching campaign was that it not only delivered exceptional metrics and uptake but it also led to increased competition in the power supply industry and lower prices for electricity consumers throughout NZ,” says regular DSA judge Helen Baxter, Managing Director of Mohawk Media.  “It shows how powerfuldigital can be for driving awareness, changing behaviour and leading to increased social
benefits.”

DraftFCB, which won three of the four quarterly Digital Strategy Awards, was competing for the overall title against PHDIQ and its Unilever Dove Makeup Remover campaign. Other DraftFCB contenders included the BMW Summer Sale campaign and the Maybelline Baby Lips campaign.

The agency won $10,000 worth of media from Yahoo! New Zealand About the Yahoo! New Zealand Digital Strategy Awards Launched in 2010, the Yahoo! New Zealand Digital Strategy Awards were established to
emphasise the key role media strategy plays in the success of digital campaigns. 

Every quarter was judged by a panel of three judges made up of two core and one guest judge. Entries by the finalists were reviewed by all 2011 quarterly judges. 

2011 judges  were Laura Maxwell-Hansen, General Manager of Yahoo! New Zealand, Helen Baxter, Managing Director of Mohawk Media, Gavin Pook, Marketing Manager of Red Bull,  Sarah Meikel,  General  Manager of Marketing, Positively Wellington Tourism, Justin Watson, General Manager - Marketing Communications, Tourism New Zealand and Catherine Collins Head of Retail and CRM Communications at Vodafone Entries for the 2012 Digital Strategy Awards are  open 18th of April for campaigns that ran between January to March 2012 

More information can be found at http://nz.advertising.yahoo.com/awards