Canadian creativity for an American brand earned the top prize at last night’s Cassies awards gala as Juniper Park‘s work for Frito Lay North America‘s Sunchips won the Grand Prix.
A 13-member judging panel, chaired by Bensimon Byrne creative director David Rosenberg, deemed the Sunchips case study the best of the show’s record-breaking 177 entries.
It marks the first time an American campaign has won a Cassies Grand Prix.
Toronto-based Juniper Park, an Omnicom-owned agency, has been working to brand Sunchips as a greener, healthier snack food since the agency opened in 2007.
A series of solar-powered print ads and sun-focused television spots led to a 17% increase in 2008 sales over 2007 baseline numbers, according to the agency’s case study. Brand awareness doubled during that time, and the product line was chosen as one of three Walmart "Value Producing Items" during the retailer’s Earth Month sales period.
"It’s a big idea for a big client that had a big impact in a big market," said Rosenberg. "It was extraordinarily impressive how [Juniper] repositioned that business. The judges were completely impressed with the quality of the creative that surrounded the strategy. It’s a really deserving winner."
Aside from the Grand Prix, Juniper Park took home four Cassies golds–three in the Canadian Success Outside Canada category for Sunchips, Lay’s and the Frito Lay master brand, and one in Packaged Goods–Food for Sunchips.
However, Frito-Lay Canada won awards last night too. BBDO/Proximity won two golds for its Doritos Guru campaign. The cross-media contest to name a new Doritos flavour won in the Best Launch and Events, Seasonal & Short Term categories.
DDB Canada was the most awarded agency of the night, medalling six times. That tally included two golds for Bayer‘s Yasmin campaign, and two more for its Subaru Impreza campaign. It also picked up two bronze awards for its Knorr Colourful Soup case study for Unilever and the Subaru Forester campaign.
Bensimon Byrne rounds out the list of big winners with five trophies. It shared a gold with its Narrative Advocacy Media division for RecycleMe.org, the organ donation campaign it created for Trillium Gift of Life Network. It took home three silvers for work on Loblaw‘s President’s Choice and Barclays Global Investors Canada, and a bronze for Hyundai Auto Group Canada‘s "Smart Is In" campaign.
That bronze came in the Success Despite the Recession category, a new category for those cases "where the results, on their face, may not be as strong, but they are still impressive when the pressures of the recession are taken into account," according to a press release.
Rosenberg said the recession was certainly felt in some categories, but more notable was its lack of influence in others.
"Although you hear so much about [the recession’s] impact on the automotive category, we did have a number of automotive success stories in this year show," said Rosenberg, noting awards for Subaru, Ford, Suzuki, Lexus, Hyundai and Mini Canada. "Smart strategy and brilliant work will still pull through and get results."
Rosenberg added that there was no over-arching sense of lowered expectations among the judges when it came time to chose winners. "There was no lesser standard of success," he said. "The winning cases were as impressive as they are every year."
There were 39 Cassies awarded in all: 19 golds, nine silvers and 10 bronzes, as well as the Grand Prix.
For the second year in a row, the Cassies were included as part of the Institute of Communication Agencies‘ Advertising Week programing.
