It was no accident that Extreme Group won top honours at this year’s ICE Awards, held last night in Halifax to celebrate the year’s best East Coast advertising.
Extreme’s Work Safe campaign for the Workers’ Compensation Board of Nova Scotia, which showed dangerous workplace situations just moments before an accident, took home Best in Show at the annual gala.
Brian Hickling, the award show co-chair and senior vice-president at Halifax-based agency Colour, said the campaign stands out for taking a fresh slant on a message that has been getting a lot of attention recently.
“Work safety has won across Canada,” said Hickling. “I loved how well-crafted and well-written [Extreme’s campaign] was for such a harsh topic. It’s elegant where you could have just gone for the shocking visual.”
The campaign also took Gold in the Public Service Campaign category, won a Best Craft Award for its copywriting, and two of its 30-second television executions received recognition in the Public Service Single category.
Extreme’s “Home of the Dead” 30-second spot for the Toronto After Dark Film Festival also won Silver in Cinema or TV Under 30K.
Colour also had a strong showing, winning three Golds in the Online Video, Non-Traditional Guerilla and Website-Business to Customer categories for various components of its Landlord Lou campaign for Killam Properties. The work advertised rental properties to university students with several comedic sketches at LandlordLou.ca. Hickling’s agency also won a Craft Copywriting award for the campaign.
Target swept the radio categories. Although no Golds were given, the St. John’s-based agency won a Silver for its “Out of Time Billy” single spot for client A&P Canada, a Silver for its Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism radio campaign, and two merit awards.
In fact, only six Gold medals were awarded across all 22 categories during the ceremony. Hickling said this is not a result of poor work being submitted, but rather the criteria set by the six-member judging panel.
“I love that this region is doing work of this quality,” Hickling said. “I’m quite proud of their achievements. It revs me up to do work for our clients to the same calibre.”
