The Campaign:The Loerie Awards, Africa’s premier advertising festival was experiencing a three-year decline in entries. Our brief was to bandage the bleed, whilst also raising the public profile of the Loerie awards.The target audience was the creative community in South Africa: advertising agencies, production houses, design studios, ad schools and the like.

The strategy was to combat and somehow turn our critics - tapping into the latent cynicism of previously unsuccessful entrants who are often reticent to enter (and risk losing) again and convert them back into competitive participants of the Loerie Awards. We titled the campaign “Don’t Hate. Create”Launch and Implementation:We sent out a series of posters into the community bearing typical advertising hate speech such as “It’s been bone before” etc.Included on the posters were instructions for downloading a custom built iPhone app called the “Trans-hater”. Viewers could then use their iPhones to transform the messages from negative to positive.We then used the same technology on the interactive awards entry pack, titled ‘The Haters guide to winning’, which explained the new rules and categories giving creatives a better chance of winning. We also included a QR coded disc that generated a virtual Loerie Grand Prix to give the viewer the feeling of winning.

Trans-hating collateral was used extensively on non-digital platforms such as Judge’s lenticular passes, registration signage, reversible t-shirts and more.We also sent out viral videos for a fictitious company we created called Hateco, the unofficial sponsor of the 2011 Loeries.Success:The campaign has been universally hailed by the Loerie organisers, sponsors, partners, the general public and even our jaded ad community as the best Loerie’s campaign ever. More than 1000 Virtual Grand Prix photos were uploaded (by ad guys!) and the campaign achieved the number two trending spot on twitter. The posters instantly became collector’s items. Marketing and PR generated an added value estimate of over R36m in unpaid media. On-line coverage increased by 78% from 2010, broadcast coverage increased by 6% and online by 96%. The rate of decline in entries dropped from 5% in 2010 to just 2% - improving the 2011 projection by 250%.

But all that aside the real measure of success for this campaign was getting a jaded group of creative souls to rediscover their passion for advertising and start creating great work. And isn’t that what it’s all about?

Marketing and PR generated an added value estimate of over R36m in unpaid media. Online coverage increased by 78% from 2010, broadcast coverage increased by 6%. The rate of decline in entries dropped from 5% in 2010 to just 2% - improving the 2011 projection by 250%. The campaign has been universally hailed by the Loerie organisers, sponsors, partners, general public and even our jaded ad community as the best Loerie’s campaign ever. More than 1,000 Virtual Grand Prix photos were uploaded (by ad guys!) and the campaign achieved the No.2 trending spot on Twitter.