This year the MFA Awards mark a quarter century of change-making and effective media thinking. From physical entries delivered in person at the very last-minute possible, sit-down dinners switched for theatre-style representations and back again, entertainers swinging from the ceiling and champagne vending machines, we’re celebrating 25 Moments from the MFA Awards – in no particular order!
1.
At the very beginning, like other industry awards, entries to the MFA Awards were printed and bound, hand delivered by agency personnel. Judging was also conducted entirely in person. This involved the booking of 15 rooms so that 150 judges could read, score and discuss all entries on the one day. The coffee run alone would take an hour.
2.
For Garth Agius, sales and marketing Director at SGK, who sat on the very first MFA Awards Steering Committee, the biggest moment was looking out at the crowd at the very first awards ceremony as the 1990s were coming to a close.
“I recall addressing the room to open the awards and thinking ‘this is pretty damn good for our industry’. The media agency landscape was undergoing significant change, and being able to shine the light on media strategy and creative media thinking was a major step forward in recognising and advancing the craft of media. It’s amazing to reflect on how many have continued to build on that moment and how the MFA Awards has contributed to the success and independence we see in the industry today,” he said.
3.
The Media Palace dominated the first few MFA Awards, sweeping most categories. In 2000, the now-defunct agency won five of the 11 categories – for four different clients – including the Grand Prix for Lion Nathan Hahn Premium.
4.
Back in 2001, The Media Edge decided to fly people from its Melbourne and Adelaide offices to Sydney “for a night of fun and bonding”, then-CEO Mike Porter said. “We had a couple of entries and actually won an award, an achievement back then when The Media Palace won everything!”
Then on the night of the MFA Awards, domestic airline Ansett was placed into administration and all flights were grounded, leaving Media Edge employees stranded. “That day was complete chaos,” Porter said. “Half the flying public were trying to book alternative flights on Qantas – there was no Virgin! We ended up hiring cars and people from Melbourne and Adelaide drove home.”
5.
In the mid-2010s the MFA Awards moved to a theatre-style presentation as a way of combating the notoriously chatty crowds who talked through the winners’ announcement. An unexpected hit from this development was the alcohol-filled eskies, strategically placed at the end of each seating row.
6.
At the 2010 MFA Awards, Starcom and Mars Petcare brand Pedigree dominated the winners’ stage with the Pedigree Adoption Drive campaign, taking home the Grand Prix as well as winning in three other categories: Best Integrated Campaign, Best Media Innovation and the Partnership Award with Network Ten.
The campaign placed thousands of yellow, life-sized cardboard cutouts of dogs in streets and parks around the country, each cutout featuring an individual dog’s story and information on how to adopt them. Network Ten integrated the campaign into its AFL coverage, further increasing awareness. As a result, 3,365 dogs were adopted within two months of the campaign launch, awareness of the adoption program increased to 32 per cent and more than $170,000 was raised in donations.
7.
The following year in 2011, another campaign stole the limelight. Tontine’s ‘The First Pillow With An Expiry Date’ campaign by full-service agency Happy Soldiers, and MediaCom as collaborating partner, won the Grand Prix and three other gongs: IT & Consumer Durables, Best Integrated Campaign and Best Demonstration of Results.
More than a campaign, the idea turned the product into a media channel with an expiration date stamped on all Tontine pillows as a way of reminding people to buy a new pillow. The date stamp changed Tontine’s entire business: from the machinery, the production line, packaging, trade relationships and consumer behaviour. In the five-day activation period, sales increased by 345 per cent – far exceeding the 30 per cent target by 1000 per cent! All on a media budget of $1.5 million.
8.
When industry legend John ‘Steady’ Steedman, then-CEO of GroupM Australia & New Zealand, was inducted into the MFA Hall of Fame in 2013, the MFA recruited then-Mindshare CEO Katie Rigg-Smith to hold a ‘fake’ meeting with Steady so he could be presented with the award. This was necessary because Steady would be overseas on the night of the awards.
This is how Rigg-Smith remembers it: “I was only recently CEO and I think I freaked Steady out when I informed him I really needed a confidential chat with him and it had to be in person. On the day, it took the MFA team a little while to find the office we were in, and I was madly tap-dancing trying to fill a fake meeting time with Steady. Suffice it to say, he was totally surprised when the MFA burst in with the trophy. He also had a few choice Steady-like words to say to all of us.”
9.
2013 could be called the year of MEC, now Wavemaker. The GroupM agency walked away with the most gongs, four, from nine nominations. In two of the categories it won, MEC was up against itself with multiple finalists. Agency employees celebrated by taking a group photo on the terrace of Star City Casino, the awards venue, with CEO Peter Vogel taking pride of place in the front.
10.
From NGEN Award winners to Grand Prix superstars in the space of 12 months! In 2014, Mindshare NGENers John Dawson and Mark Golafshan from Mindshare won the NGEN Award with their ‘Lace it up’ entry for Youth Off The Streets. In 2015, they returned to the MFA Awards stage to accept the Grand Prix for the resulting campaign, which used distinctive blue laces to symbolise the reality of homeless youth sleeping with their shoes on, for fear they may be stolen. ‘Lace it up’ reached more than 1.4 million Australians through earned media delivered a 112 per cent increase in donations to Youth Off The Streets.
We’ll be sharing more MFA Awards moments next week.
