Singapore – McCann Erickson Singapore was awarded the first ever Grand Prix at the Effies Singapore Awards 2009 for the campaign “Raffles Place Ghost”. It also took home a Gold award at the same show.
The multi-award-winning campaign was developed for Global Manpower Professionals (GMP), a regional recruitment and consultancy firm, with the idea: no one should work late. The agency released a viral video of two executives encountering a ghost in an elevator while working late. It created controversy last year as international and local media speculated on the authenticity of the clip.
The campaign, made on a shoestring budget of $100,000, received phenomenal results: over two million views of the viral video after three months; discussed on more than 300 sites; 48 percent increase in online registration with GMP and 9 times more traffic in their website.
“To win Singapore’s first ever Effies Grand Prix vindicates my belief that great creativity leads to great brand awareness and sales,” said Farrokh Madon, executive creative director of McCann Erickson Singapore.
Gold awards also went to Zugi Travels “World on sale” campaign from Kinetic and Mindshare; Durex “Stretching Durex in new ways” campaign from Ogilvy and Zenith; Starhub “Geeks not freaks” from DDB and Zenith.
That night, DDB bagged the most awards with six, followed by Ogilvy with four. From a total of 80 entries across 35 categories, a total of 19 awards, including one Grand Prix, four Gold, seven Silver and seven Bronze awards were handed out.
Chief judge and Bates 141 regional planning director, Frederique Covington, remarked that the competition reflected the developments in technology and the current economic environement.
“There was a lot more innovative use of media among this year’s winners. So we saw more viral campaigns, more social media and digital work while public relations and events also became foundations for ideas. The quality of local insights in this year’s winners was also apparent as there was a real genuine attempt to understand the local Singaporean audience and to bring that across in the work.”
