‘Best Job’ dominates 35th Annual Bad Awards
CB knows this is very old news in Brissie, but since no trade press covered it at the time, it’s probably still worth a run: The 35th annual BAD Awards were held on Saturday, 24 October at the Hilton Ballroom in Brisbane. As expected, the night belonged to the Sapient Nitro gang and their “Best Job in the World” campaign. The agency collected 21 gongs, including Best of Show and five gold awards.
Cristian Staal, Merrin McCormick and Ralphie Barnett made graciousacceptance speeches, most notably Staal’s thanking of the rest of thecreative department so they could focus on the Best Job campaign. Theoverwhelming impression for the audience was that this creative trios’international stardom has only brought them more down to earth and madethe Brisbane advertising community stronger.
In a well-calculated twist, Best of Show was the first award given onthe night, allowing the rest of this year’s work to stand on it’s own.Other big winners on the night were GPYR, who took home 6 silvers among their16 awards and Junior who received 5 silvers out of 12 awards total.
Bigfish.tv also took out 6 gongs, with 2 golds and 3 silvers, mostlyfor their work on the online cartoon FEST. Zoom Film and Televisionscored a gold for Mark Toia’s cinematography on the “Come Play” World Cup spotand Liz Murphy and Taxi received gold for direction on Suncorp
“Protection”. Liquid Animation’s “Your Vote Means Something” andCutting Edge’s special effects on the epic “Candy Store” rounded outthe gold awards.
This year’s inductee to the Hall of Fame was legendary Brisbanedirector Ron Johannesson and a Matt Dye was recognised for hison-going dedication to the Club, taking home the well-deserved BAD Person of the Year honour.
The event was a formal dinner celebrating 35 years of Club history withseveral BAD Club Hall of Fame members in attendance. Easy care polyester fabrics abounded as many of the crowd of 350 paid homage tothe event’s retro 70s theme. Ian Turpie added stylishly to the time warp as Master of Ceremonies.
9 Comments
vegas baby!
Suncorp winning a Gold. Impressive.
Go GPYR
Was it as embarrassing as the year McCanns won everything? Awk-ward….
Since when did Sapient deserve any recognition.
cummins and partners..then regrettably Nitro was responsible.
Go cummins. And Brisbane shouldnt forget it was put obn the advertising map by cummins and partners
cummins insider
Thanks for that, Sean.
I wish more of you were here
CAROLINE MARCUS
November 8, 2009
Play hard, work harder…Best Job in the World winner Ben Southall at Daydream Island
TOURISM QUEENSLAND hailed it as the ”most successful tourism campaign ever”, a $2.5 million strategy that returned $390 million in global publicity. But the Best Job in the World campaign has failed to lure foreigners.
Official figures show the number of international holidaymakers travelling to Queensland dropped by 8 per cent in the 2008-09 financial year. The total number of international visitors – which also includes people travelling on business and for other reasons – fell 5 per cent.
The Best Job In The World captured the imagination of a worldwide audience when it was launched in January. The prize was a six-month, $150,00 job as the caretaker of Hamilton Island.
Briton Ben Southall, 34, landed the gig. Last month the campaign received the Australian Marketing Institute’s marketing program of the year award, the Queensland Premier’s Award for Excellence and a British Campaign Big award.
Tourism Queensland said about 1.45 million international tourists travelled to Queensland in the 12 months to June 30, 2009, a drop of 119,000 from the previous financial year. It said international business travellers to the state dropped by 27,000 to 166,000.
Numbers in other categories increased slightly, resulting in a total fall of 117,000 in international visitors, Tourism Queensland said.
In the Whitsundays, where the campaign was focused, the total number of visitors from other countries dropped by 10,000 to 218,000.
A Tourism Queensland spokeswoman said it had been ”a challenging and turbulent 12 months for the tourism industry worldwide”, largely because of the global recession.
Tourism Queensland was now working on campaigns to convert ”massive interest into real bookings”.
On Friday a Californian family, the Defeos, will join Mr Southall for five weeks after 50-year-old mother of two Barbie Defeo won the Best Experience In The World campaign, launched in August. She will act as an ”assistant” to Mr Southall by travelling to some of the 74 islands in the Whitsundays that he has not had the time to cover.
Mr Southall, who finishes his tenure at the end of next month, said while it had been a ”mind-blowing” experience, the job was not all play.
”It’s always a job – there isn’t a day it doesn’t feel like it,” he said last week from Orpheus Island. ”But … I’d get bored out of my mind if it was a hammock job.”
His day begins about 6am, when he tries to squeeze in some fitness before embarking on an itinerary of travel and research. From 9pm to midnight he updates his blog. ”I’ve woken up a few times with my head on my laptop,” he said.
Despite noticing a severe decline in his fitness due to limited personal time, he greatly enjoyed the job.
Mr Southall hoped to continue working with Tourism Queensland next year, beginning with a trip to Japan in January to promote the region. He was also planning to kayak along the Great Barrier Reef.
Tourism Queensland will not list seek applicants for best job in the world next year.
11:24 – I don’t work for Cummins, but given the massive slump in tourism world wide, this is actually saying it did work, and that Tourism Queensland are trying to convert ‘massive interest world wide’ into real bookings.
I met two blondes who just got back from Hayman Island last night, and they flew out from LA because of this campaign. Problem is when they got here, they really wished they booked more time in Sydney.
Can’t understand why, the most fantastic beaches in the world seem to be in every country.
I agree 5:51.
QLDers aren’t known for being the brightest lot. Our client’s bookings were down 83% in the month of October last year alone, and that was for a whole country. People just kept canceling their holidays because they didn’t know if they’d have jobs to go back to. I have no idea what QLD tourism is complaining about if you do a comparative.
“Massive personal interest in to real bookings” – I think anyone with half a brain (obviously not the Queenslanders working on it now) should be able to do that, within the structure of the campaign.
Jesus, simple, beautiful campaign cocked up massively. Goes to show, this industry is the only one where we get paid to do our worst.