No Aussie agencies make shortlist for global social media awards
Australian agencies have failed to make the grade in the International Social Media Marketing Awards for the second year running.
Across the 23 categories, not a single Australian agency made The Bees shortlist for 2011.
Last year, the first of The Bees Awards, saw the same story,with no Aussie agencies shortlisted.
Among the big winners in 2010 was the much talked about Old Spice campaign by Wieden + Kennedy.
This year’s shortlist is dominated by US agencies, although there are also finalists from China, Argentina, Singapore, Sweden, Brazil, Russia, Thailand, South Africa, Hungary, London, France, Denmark and Israel.
There are also a handful of NZ shortlistings, including Saatchi & Saatchi NZ’s YouTube channel for the NZ Army, and entries from Media Design Schoool in the student brief category.
The Dulux Let’s Colour viral video, which included Aussie Rebecca Campbell on the team was shortlisted for Euro RSCG London.
Last year saw Saatchi & Saatchi LA named social media agency of the year and P&G named client of the year.
This year’s agency of the year finalists include Deep Focus, Evolution Bureau, 72andSunny, Saatchi & Saatchi LA, Rockfish Interactive and PR agency Weber Shandwick.
Client of the year finalists are Pepsi, McDonald’s, Fiat, Toyota and Skittles. In Australia, Toyota pulled back from experimenting with social media after Saatchi & Saatchi’s “abuser generated content” social media disaster in late 2009.
At the time of posting, The Bees had not responded to Mumbrella’s question about how many Australian agencies had entered the competition this year.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Well honestly I haven’t seen any amazing social media work from Australian agencies. Unless you can show me some I missed, but otherwise I’m not that surprised.
The Australian agencies need to start integrating social media more into their campaigns, even doing social media only campaigns.
That’s my opinion anyways
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Tim did any aussie agencies enter?
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Some might see this as a good thing… in line with Aussie agencies’ reputation for no BS and not falling for marketing fads…
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I don’t think this is a negative reflection on Australian agencies more a reflection on clients and the Australian business pysche where instant ROI is essential. There is plenty of social media ‘experts’ in Australia talking about social media but there is still little evidence of clients actually doing anything innovative with social media. Until social media can provide clear ROI on marketing spend I doubt this will ever change.
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Thank you for this detailed review. That might have taken time to compile. This is a great post on our event.
Frankly, we wouldn’t want this to be about a “poor” performance of Australia’s agencies. The Bees have received many entries from Australia… but we have received entries from 33 countries as well. The participation exceeded all of our optimistic predictions and the quality level was very high.
Most of campaigns were excellent. Nominees are simply exceptional. We would have loved to cover more campaigns but at this 2nd edition, we have 23 categories.
All information on entries is kept confidential in respect for the participants.
Australian agencies seem to us to be of high level even if they have not showed up as nominees.
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No surprises there! I recently wrote a piece for Digital Ministry about how agencies (esp. Australian) are sabotaging our social media strategies because they don’t really know what they are doing… then I wrote another article about why Australian businesses are behind in social media! I think our agencies need to hire more people who truly understand social, and our businesses need to invest more money in social campaigns.
If you’re interested in checking out the articles:
http://digitalministry.com/AU/.....strategy/1
http://digitalministry.com/AU/.....al+world/1
Let’s hope next year tells another tale!
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hear hear Tom, we should be proud of this outcome. I see Pepsi is a finalist in these awards and from what I understand they lost market share and something like $350m in revenue on the back of their foray into social (at the expense of traditional comms) so not sure what they might be getting awarded for….participation perhaps?
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Well done Cara, spotting an opportunity for self-promotion.
Well played.
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Thanks Tom. Had I been better I would have put links to articles on my own site but I guess we all learn as we go along. Sorry if you felt it was out of line but I just thought it was very relevant to the discussions we were having on the DM site around the same topic – and timely as they were both written over the last month or so.
Also to your original comment, and that of ‘we are not social’ – I disagree that it is a good thing because I can guarantee you that our agencies are still out there wasting tons of their clients’ money on failed campaigns and purporting to be ‘social’ when they simply are not.
Pepsi have accomplished a lot with their refresh project and there are countless expensive ‘traditional’ campaigns that have completely failed so you can hardly reference one social foray that may not have been successful and use it as a case study to justify not playing in that space.
There is irrefutable proof that social media returns killer ROI if it is done correctly. The problem is not with social as a marketing channel, but with the people who are currently attempting to execute it in Australia.
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Clearly clients and agencies don’t understand how or what social media is all about and feel just because their audience plays in this circle they need to bombarde them with irrelevant brand pages that achieve very little….when a brand comes up with something worth sharing via the social media network and relevant to those who share it i’m sure it’ll be seen as a great case study and the Bees will gladly acknowledge it.
Understand why social media started and what people use it for and then maybe brands will understand how to engage with it…..
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How to win friends and influence people:
“The problem is not with social as a marketing channel, but with the people who are currently attempting to execute it in Australia”
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point taken – however if it makes it any better I am one of those people! It’s not down to an individual level but a general set of circumstances that exist in the Australian social media market at the moment (I would link again to the article I wrote about it but fear I will just be digging my hole even deeper). We are on our way though… and hopefully will catch up over the next year. I have faith we will get there!
If I awake to an angry digital mob tomorrow I guess I can only blame myself 🙂
In other news, how about that royal wedding eh? ….
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I personally have seen some great campaigns for Australian companies in Social Media teams I have worked in and assisted with over the last few years. I feel that possibly people were just too busy to enter into some of these awards at the time?
I think another problem many traditional Australian companies have is they are not going to risk it creating a campaign such as the Old Spice one for example because to some it may seem a little pushing the boundaries.
Also another key consideration is costing, Social Media is often a add on to projects people think they will throw a few bucks social’s way and see what happens most of the time you need decent time to create a great strategy/develop your concept.
I hope next year we see Aussies dominating!
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tom, you are blind if you think social is a fad.
that’s just ostrich-head-in-sand talk.
what’s this: http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com.....fographic/
oh gee, 1 billion + smartphones in the world… social networking used by 49%.
yes, 500 million is a fad.
LMAO
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