Cannes Lions
WHYBIN\TBWA AUCKLAND, Auckland / MERCURY ENERGY / 2013
Overview
Entries
Credits
Execution
Newspapers are rather ambiguous. You buy one without really knowing what’s inside it
beyond the front-page story. It was this media insight that provided us with the perfect
canvas to tell the story of GEM. We interrogated The Herald’s editors and extracted every
fact possible about their 45472nd edition. Taking art direction cues from the newspaper
itself, we displayed these facts as headlines and made them front and back page news.
And to keep things interesting, while still staying true to the front and back page, we used
the newspaper’s classified section to insert some facts of our own (there was even a wanted
ad for a flux capacitor).
We used the medium of a newspaper, and made it our message.
Outcome
On Tuesday 9th April, 2013, all 870,000 readers of The Herald received a newspaper that told
them exactly what they were paying for, before they even turned the first page. They say you
should never let the facts get in the way of a good story, but on that day, the facts were the
story.
Traffic to Mercury Energy’s website rose sharply, with GEM registrations significantly
increasing. We can’t speak for other national news websites, but we suspect we stole their
thunder, on a day when all eyes should have been on them and the iron lady.