Auckland Company Wins Coveted Webby Award

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MEDIA RELEASE
May 6, 2009

Auckland Company Creates An Effect To Win Coveted Webby Award In New York

Auckland based design firm Alt Group is in a New York state of mind – the company has just picked up its third major design accolade in the City this week – a coveted Webby Award.

Auckland based multidisciplinary design firm, Alt Group is having its best week ever, with the company last night (Tuesday, May 5) picking up the Best Associations Award at New York’s prestigious 13th Annual Webby Awards.

The Webby win tops off what has been an epic award winning week for the company, which saw them take home a Silver and Bronze Pencil and two Merit Awards at the One Show Design awards (widely regarded as the one of the advertising industry’s most prestigious international awards programmes), and a Gold Cube award and two Bronze awards at the ADC (Art Directors Club) Awards, both of which were held in New York.

Beating off stiff international competition, Alt Group won the prestigious Webby Award for their Create an Effect campaign, which was devised to raise the international profile of New Zealand TVC production companies.

Hailed as the “Internet’s highest honour” by the New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international award honouring excellence on the Internet, including websites, interactive advertising, online film and video and mobile websites. This year’s awards attracted more than 10,000 entries from over 60 countries.

Alt Group’s Create an Effect campaign was launched at the 2008 Cannes Lion International Advertising Festival through New Zealand Trade & Enterprise’s JustAddNewZealanders website (www.justaddnewzealanders.com).

Dean Poole, creative director at Alt Group, said the brief for the campaign was to raise the New Zealand screen industry’s profile at Cannes Lion, cutting through what was a noisy and demanding market and driving the target audience – industry decision makers and potential production partners – to www.justaddnewzealanders.com, where they could learn more about New Zealand’s screen industry.
“Winning a Webby is a huge accolade for us and demonstrates agency collaboration. Our web team collaborated with web gurus Shift to showcase New Zealand’s design talent in offshore markets.” said Poole.

“We relished the opportunity to work with Alt on such a strong campaign,” said Che Tamahori, managing director of the website’s developers, Shift.

“We’ve collaborated with Alt for a couple of years to evolve the platform for the JustAddNewZealanders website, and it continues to go from strength to strength. Alt’s vision has produced the perfect showcase for New Zealand’s creative sector.”

Of the campaign, Poole said: “Cannes Lion is a place where the screen production industry celebrates itself and is involved in a lot of networking events. While it was important we developed a campaign that connected with the fun and frivolity of Cannes, we also had to ensure we conveyed the key messages – that New Zealanders understand how to deliver creative experiences that engage an audience, pack an emotional punch, and create memories.”

The Create an Effect campaign was developed around ‘New Zealanders bringing storyboards to life’ and connected directly to the industry and representative companies, with the ideas executed through a series of three-dimensional onomatopoeic sound effects, such as Boom, Screech, Thwak, Kapoow, Thud, Blammo, Screech and Zapp.

Street teams were equipped with signs and armed with digital cameras to record interactions, with the images then being published on www.justaddnewzealanders.com.

David-Michel Davies, executive director of the Webby Awards, said: "All of this year's winners embrace the Internet as the medium where they can take risks, experiment, and share new ideas.

"All of our winners have helped make the Internet a richer, more exciting, and more vibrant experience."

In addition to picking up a Webby Award for their Create an Effect campaign, Alt Group also received an Official Honouree mention in the Corporate Communications category for their work on www.humoffice.co.nz, the website for Formway Furniture’s revolutionary office system, HUM.

The Official Honouree distinction is awarded to the top 15% of all work submitted that exhibits remarkable achievement. Just 12 entries were declared Honourees in the Corporate Communications category in this year’s awards.

The Webby Award winners were announced on last night (May 5, 2009) and will be honoured at a star-studded ceremony, hosted by American actor and comedian Seth Myers in New York City on June 8.

ENDS

About Alt Group
Alt Group is an Auckland based strategic design company, established eight years ago by directors Ben Corban and Dean Poole. With a team of 18, the company’s long term vision is to be recognised as a boutique design firm that just happens to be based in New Zealand.

Major clients include New Zealand Trade & Enterprise, Farmgate Wines, Formway Furniture, and law firm, Hudson Gavin Martin.

Last year Alt Group won a total of 55 international and national awards, in their most successful year to date since the company was formed.

This year looks likely to be just as successful. In the past week, Alt Group picked up a Silver and Bronze Pencil and two Merit awards at the One Show Design Awards in New York, and a coveted Gold Cube and two Bronze Cubes at the ADC Awards, also held in new York.

In April 2009, their work was selected for inclusion in the UK’s Creative Review Annual and in February, the company was awarded a Certificate of Typographic Excellence from the Type Directors Club in New York. They were also finalists in the Editorial Category of the UK Design Week Awards and The Australian Creative Magazine’s Hotshop Awards.

About the Webby Awards
The Webby Awards is presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 650 person judging academy whose members include internet co-inventor Vinton Cerf, R/GA’s Chief Bob Greenberg, “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening, Arianna Huffington and Harvey Weinstein.

Previous Webby winners include such esteemed industry leaders such as Amazon.com, eBay, Yahoo!, iTunes, Google, FedEx, BBC News, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, NPR, Salon Magazine, Facebook, Meetup, Wikipedia, Flickr, ESPN, Comedy Central, PBS, The Onion News Network, The Office Webisodes, and My Damn Channel.

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