Two Canadian agencies, Taxi and Reason Partners, have been recognized by Facebook for creating outstanding creative on the social network.
Reason Partners received a bronze award for its campaign, “Paint Chip Names for Men,” for CIL Paint at Facebook’s second annual Facebook Studio Awards, which announced its 2012 winners Monday. Taxi’s “Merry Under the Mistletoe” campaign for Telus was also shortlisted.
The CIL Paint app, part of an integrated campaign that also included OOH, in-store and print, challenged consumers to come up with masculine names for paint colours. In total, the app attracted 20,000 unique users who spent an average of 10 minutes on the app.
“I thought it was incredibly funny, because it was built around a real human insight around men,” said Mark D’arcy, Facebook’s director of global creative solutions, who led the judging process. “It gave a framework for people to express a very simple story that was very fun.”
For “Merry Under the Mistletoe” Taxi placed webcams and mistletoe next to phones in Telus stores, publishing a live feed to a Facebook app. The brand’s Facebook fans were then asked to call the phone and if an in-store customer picked up, both consumers won a Samsung prize pack. D’Arcy said the work was selected for the shortlist because it successfully bridged a Facebook initiative with a physical location – something many marketers try and fail to do.
The Facebook Studio Awards are judged by Facebook’s creative council, a group of agency executives that includes Droga5 founder and CEO David Droga, JWT chief creative officer Jeff Benjamin and Canadian Christina Yu, creative director of Red Urban.
D’Arcy explained the creative is judged on four criteria: how social the work is, how well it seizes the creative opportunity of Facebook, how well it scales to a large audience and whether it drove business results. The judging follows a model similar to the Andy Awards and most other major advertising awards shows, in which jurors split into small groups to create a shortlist then vote on work that scores high in the preliminary round, D’Arcy said.
He said the awards were created largely a response to demands from Facebook’s client council – a group of brand marketers who advise the social network, much like its creative council – which wanted Facebook to spotlight strong creative.
Though there is not an awards gala, winners will be invited to a Facebook event during the 2013 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
