Next week Marketing will host the 93rd Marketing Awards Gala at the Carlu in Toronto.
We’re excited to announce who the winners will be from our full shortlist, particularly the honoree for our biggest award of the night – Best of Show.
Below, we’ve created a retrospective of the last five winners of this prestigious trophy.
- Best of Show 2010 – Taxi Canada and Pfizer – “Antiquing/Strolling/Reading”
In this hilarious campaign for Viagra, baby boomer men tell the viewer about their “strolling” or “antiquing” problem — a habit that he and his wife developed in order to pass the time. After trying Viagra though, the “reading” or walking problem suddenly disappeared.
- Best of Show 2011 – Station X and Vancouver International Film Festival, “The Warden Sixteen”
Before every film shown at the Vancouver International Film Festival, there’s a teaser trailer that advertises VIFF to the audience. As the video below explains, seeing this same spot over and over again during a 16-day festival can become tiresome for moviegoers. To inject some life into VIFF’s pre-screening spots, Station X created a short film divided into 16 parts (one for each day of the festival) that were played before screenings. Each clip was a different element of a mysterious plot line, not shown in chronological order. To figure out what the story was, festival attendees had to go to VIFF’s website, where they could move the clips around and discover the short film’s storyline.
- Best of Show 2012 – Cundari and The Hospital for Sick Children, “Pain Squad”
This smartphone app helped hospitalized kids turn an arduous chore into a time for play. In order to help minimize the amount of pain cancer patients feel after their treatments, hospitals often ask them to keep a daily log — it’s not something you’re really up for doing though after you’ve completed a round of radiation or chemotherapy. In order to get kids to record their health on a regular basis, Cundari created an app that gameified the process, awarding “elite pain police” badges to kids when they recorded their pain twice a day, and showing content from police shows like Flashpoint and Rookie Blue.
- Best of Show 2013 – DDB Canada/Tribal Toronto and McDonald’s, “Our Food. Your Questions.”
Part of being a major restaurant chain is your food is always under scrutiny, and McDonald’s in particular has faced lots of questions over the years about the source of its products and how they are prepared. To help the chain connect directly with customers and address any concerns they might have about where McDonald’s meat or eggs come from, DDB Canada and Tribal Toronto created the “Our Food. Your Questions.” campaign, which sought to dispel some of the rumours and myths the fast food chain faces from consumers.
- Best of Show 2014 – Rethink and Molson Canadian, “Passport Beer Fridge”
The Best of Show winner you’re likely most familiar with this year is Rethink’s beer fridge, created to spread the Canadian love of beer worldwide. It’s a campaign that’s become so ubiquitous it barely needs introduction – if you were a Canadian who happened upon this fridge on the right day in the right European country, you could pop your passport into the fridge and make new friends by handing out free beer.
