Starcom wins inaugural Digital Strategy Awards

4 March 2010

For Immediate Release

Starcom wins inaugural 2010 Yahoo!Xtra Digital Strategy Awards

Auckland, March 4 2011: Starcom has been announced as the winner of the 2010 Yahoo!Xtra Digital Strategy Awards at an awards event in Auckland last night.

Starcom's Emirates Luxury campaign was announced as the overall winner of the Yahoo!Xtra Digital Strategy Awards, after beating the other quarterly winners, for the prize.

"We were very impressed with the high calibre of work that the four entries delivered," says Yahoo!Xtra's General Manager and DSA judge Laura Maxwell-Hansen. "However, Emirates chose a distinctive digital strategy that allowed them to achieve strong increases in brand awareness, favourability and purchase intent and the judges felt it stood out as the overall winner."

Launched in early 2010, the Awards were established to emphasise the key role media strategy plays in the success of digital campaigns. Campaigns can have run on any site and external judges were engaged for each quarter and the finals judging.

Starcom competed against finalists MEC with their Caltex with Techron campaign, joint team Gladeye and Zed Digital with their House of Travel campaign and Spark PHDIQ with their Unilever Sunsilk Co-creations campaign.

"What stood out about the Emirates campaign was that rather than try and pull consumers into the Emirates corporate website, Starcom's digital strategy took the messages and stories to travel audiences, and introduced them to the Emirates world of travel," says DSA judge Helen Baxter, Managing Director of Mohawk Media. "This gave the brand credibility in a neutral setting and allowed them to reach an engaged and interested travel audience".

Starcom created a mini-site to allow Emirates to take its story directly to the consumer. Using specially designed features and unique content, Emirates was able to showcase their product and services in an online environment where thousands of New Zealanders are seeking travel information.

"Whilst all their competitors were focused on price benefits, Emirates chose to focus on their unique selling propositions and resisted short-term stunts to build their audience," says Baxter. "In doing so, they attracted more than 36,000 unique browsers which was 22% above their objective."

"Despite the fact that the audience came with no incentive to win, or special deal, it was still able to organically grow on a significant level. It was a bold move, but one that paid off."

A Colmar Brunton study showed the Emirates campaign achieved a 26% increase in spontaneous brand awareness, a 14% increase in brand favourability and nearly an 80% visitor return rate as a result of engaging content.

It was also a global-first for Emirates and was featured as the spotlight campaign in their January worldwide Newsletter.

Starcom have won free entry into the CAANZ Media Awards in the Best Use of Digital category, along with $10,000 worth of media from Yahoo!Xtra.

About the Digital Strategy Awards

Every quarter was judged by a panel of three judges made up of two core and one guest judge. Entries by the four finalists were reviewed by everyone involved in the judging process throughout the year.

2010 judges were Laura Maxwell-Hansen, General Manager of Yahoo!Xtra, Helen Baxter, Managing Director of Mohawk Media, Rachel Prince, Advertising Manager of the NZ Transport Agency, Catherine Collins, Marketing Manager of Whitcoulls, Gavin Pook, Marketing Manager of Red Bull and Anna St George, Director of Lassoo Media/PR.

Entries for the 2011 Digital Strategy Awards are open now.

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

*Colmar Brunton brand study using a simultaneous control-exposed methodology.

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