Mindshare and Bohemia dominate MFA Awards, while Volvo wins Grand Prix
Mindshare and Bohemia Group dominated the list of winners at last night’s Media Federation of Australia (MFA) Awards, which returned after a one-year hiatus.
The agencies took home four trophies a piece, with Mindshare and White Grey winning the Grand Prix award with client Volvo for its sustainability project, the Living Sea Wall.
The Grand Prix winners accepting the award
Mindshare also won in the ‘behaviour change’, ‘business impact’, and ‘best use of innovation in media’ categories, while Bohemia triumphed for ‘best use of real-time marketing’, ‘brand impact’, ‘long-term results’, and ‘bravery’.
Anthony Fitzgerald, former CEO of MCN (now Foxtel Media) for 15 years, was inducted into the Hall of Fame and congratulated in a video featuring a raft of industry executives.
Fitzgerald receiving his Hall of Fame recognition
Former head of the MFA Carol Morris, PHD’s chief digital officer Stuart Bailey and Hyland’s commercial director Vince Meoli were awarded Industry Contribution honours, while Nolan Yu and Max Learmont were the winners of the NGEN Award, recognising young media agency talent with less than five years’ experience. OMD’s Yu and M&C Saatchi’s Learmont also took out the category in 2017, and this year won for their entry ‘Walk A Mile in Their Boots’ for UnLtd charity Backtrack.
Last year’s awards were cancelled due to issues with criteria centred on recognising effectiveness, but returned this year accompanied by a full-day conference called MFA EX, dubbed an effectiveness expo to highlight the body’s commitment to overhaul the entry, criteria and judging processes.
In order to transform the judging process, the MFA created a 50% weighting towards results, and allowed judges to request additional information and clarification from entrants. Judges provided feedback on all entires, and participated in a blind vote through a third-party to ultimately choose 19 winners, down from 26 categories in previous years.
MFA-member media agencies boycotted domestic awards last year to show solidarity towards the MFA’s pause of its awards program, and shut down yesterday to allow employees to attend MFA EX.
MFA CEO Sophie Madden said the shake up has paid off, both for the MFA and award winners.
“The MFA Awards’ renewed focus on effectiveness is a key part of the MFA’s commitment to demonstrating media agencies’ contribution to achieving tangible, long-lasting results for clients,” Madden said.
“Entries were streamlined to ensure only the very best were awarded, and judging overhauled to maximise transparency and rigour. Congratulations to the winners, who can confidently say they are delivering the highest quality of strategic thinking and long-lasting results for clients in the country.”
The full list of 2019 MFA Awards winners:
Grand Prix – Sponsored by Seven West Media
Volvo Australia, Omtanke: Rethinking Volvo, Mindshare and WhiteGREY
Behaviour Change
Foxtel, Fox Sports: Monty’s Wicket Warnings, Mindshare
Best Use of Real-time Marketing
News Corp, The News in Colour, Bohemia Group
Collaborating partners: M&C Saatchi
Business Impact – Sponsored by Google
Volvo Australia, Omtanke: Rethinking Volvo, Mindshare and WhiteGREY
Partnerships – Sponsored by Facebook
Specsavers, The Test Experts, Initiative Australia
Brand Impact – Sponsored by SBS Media
Aspen Pharmacare, Get back to your Asian adventure, Bohemia Group
Collaborating partners: Ogilvy Health
Best Use of Innovation in Media – Sponsored by MOVE (OMA)
Foxtel, Fox Sports: Monty’s Wicket Warnings, Mindshare
Best Use of Technology
VOTE, PHD
Long-term results – Sponsored by Network Ten
Aspen Pharmacare, Creating Travel FOMO drives long-term growth for Gastro-Stop, Bohemia Group
Collaborating partners: Ogilvy Health
Best Use of Data & Analytics – Sponsored by OzTAM
Coles, Setting a new benchmark for effective media measurement, OMD
Collaborating Partners: Beatgrid, Brand Metric Measurement, Lewers, Technology Provider
Best Use of Content – Sponsored by Ad Standards
AncestryDNA, The DNA of shared milestones, OMD
Bravery – Sponsored by SCA
Ozmosis / Rip Curl, Leveraging scars as a media channel: Pay with pain, Bohemia Group
Collaborating Partners: M&C Saatchi Group
NGEN – Sponsored by UnLtd
Walk A Mile in Their Boots, Nolan Yu (OMD) and Max Learmont (M&C Saatchi)
Pro Bono/Cause Marketing Incentive – In recognition of Pam Lane
OMDonate continues!, OMD Australia
Agency Talent & Culture – Sponsored by Foxtel Media
Initiative Australia
Hall of Fame
Anthony Fitzgerald
Industry Contribution
Carol Morris
Vincenzo Meoli, Commercial Director, HYLAND
Stuart Bailey, Chief Digital Officer, PHD
Brittney Rigby was Mumbrella's deputy managing editor - news and analysis. She left Mumbrella in April 2021.
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No one going to cover henry tajers comments about his own business?
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Ikon Melbourne didn’t win one for all their amazing toy campaigns? Blimey.
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I have to say, that panel was an absolute disgrace.
If you wanted to witness first hand what’s wrong with the industry it was on show with those MFA board members and the answers to the questions they were given.
I and the vast majority of the people around me couldn’t believe the bull that was being spoken.
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“The MFA Awards’ renewed focus on effectiveness… demonstrating media agencies’ contribution to achieving tangible, long-lasting results”
Curious to how Mindshare/Volvo – Living Sea Wall (which won Grand Prix) aligned to these values. What were the long term lasting results for the brand? And what were the agency/marketing teams involvement in the concept, research and development of the project?
Great and interesting project, but not sure what ties it back to marketing effectiveness.
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Can you loop us in? What was the summary?
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What did he say?
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“Dentsu is the most desperate network”
It’s on the MFA website / webcast
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More than 1,500 people (I.e. the majority of Sydney-based media agency industry) were in attendance at MFAEx, yet there has been almost zero reportage. This was meant to be a ‘grand reset’ for the media (agency) industry. Why has the event generated only a handful of tweets from agencies (who actively participated) and award sponsors? Why not even a single puff piece post-event? Surely there was content which was provocative, illuminating or noteworthy enough to cover? There has to be a bigger a story here, or is that just it? Nothing to see…?
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Hi Curious, the article is a bit misleading unfortunately. The Living Seawall was just one small element of a much bigger strategic shift to a long-term brand-led approach which drove brand attributes +92%, market share +47% and excellent incremental profit:spend ratio. Not sure if the Effie case study is on WARC yet but worth a look.
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To steal a line from Thom Yorke.
‘Like witnessing the last desperate fart from a rotting corpse’
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When members of a “Board” swear at each other in public, you know you have problems with your organisation.
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AdNews did… https://www.adnews.com.au/news/complete-bulls-t-media-bosses-clash-over-killer-questions-at-mfa-ex
Tajer’s behaviour towards his peers and the audience was unacceptable, and the MFA should really consider his board position.
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Hi Big Picture, if you missed the event you can stream it at https://mediafederation.webcastcloud.tv. There’s also plenty of coverage on Mi3. Can’t guarantee there’ll be any puff-pieces though!
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