With the 41st Annual Gala Night came the winner of the Grand Effies and Crispin Porter + Bogusky took home the bacon. Well, in this case, it was the burger: Burger King to be exact, for the “Whopper Freakout” campaign. Over four decades of renown, the Effie award has become a global symbol of achievement bestowed on marketing communications ideas that work.
Top winner DDB pocketed 12 Effies: three Gold, six Silver and three Bronze trophies.
It rained no less than 24 Gold Effies: Independent Agencies garnered seven, Omnicom the only holding company ran away with six. MDC won three Gold Effies and the remaining eight Gold Effies shared by the industry’s holding companies.
Gold Effie agency winners by region include DDB, Energy BBDO and (Chicago), Ignited and TBWAChiatDay (Los Angeles), Crispin Porter + Bogusky (Miami), Colle + McVoy, Preston Kelly and Olson (Minneapolis), EURO RSCG, Grey, Publicis and Mindshare (New York), Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners, Goodby Silverstein+ Partners and McCann Worldgroup (San Francisco) and DDB and WONGDOODY (Seattle).
Celebrating its trademark Whopper’s 50th anniversary, Burger King embarked on a social experiment involving the ‘untimely disappearance’ of its golden boy from the menu. With the disappearance as the first, succeeding phases include serving competitors’ burgers, then recording and viewing customers’ reactions followed. Burger King then used TV spots to drive traffic to ‘Whopperfreakout.com’ to view the entirety of the experiment. Linkable and uploadable, blogs- and social networking sites-friendly, the campaign increased quarter sales by double-digits. “Burger King won the Grand Effie convincingly due to their boldness and creativity across multiple media platforms, delivering real cultural relevance and above all, outstanding business results,” said Carl Johnson, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Effie Worldwide and Co-Founder of Anomaly in a statement.
More details on the campaigns and brands for each winner can be found on www.effie.org.
