MESH DOMINATES THE INAUGURAL ‘DIGITAL’ CATEGORY AT CREATIVE CIRCLE AD OF THE MONTH AWARDS

Mesh, the digital and interactive specialist agency within the Draftfcb South Africa group, has dominated the inaugural digital category at the Creative Circle Ad of the Month Awards taking first and second spot.

Both Mesh’s winning ads were for Vodacom, and both were part of the broadband leadership campaign the hot shop developed for the agency’s long-standing client.

First placed ‘The Kiss’ was put together by Richard Fitzgerald (creative director), Julie Webb (art director) and Jade Amic (animator). The same team was joined by Pippa Capstick as copywriter for the ad that came second, ‘Catch your friends out’ with Lara De Angeli driving the strategy.

Both can be viewed online at http://www.draftfcb.co.za/loeries2010/thekiss/ and http://www.draftfcb.co.za/loeries2010/catchyourfriendsout/ respectively.

Commenting on the results, chairperson of the judging committee, Ben Wagner, said there was an interesting and wide array of entries, confirming how overdue the introduction of this category was.

Overall, he said, the conceptual thinking and idea generation was good. This was reflected extremely well in the winning piece of work that took a subject that most South African’s strongly identify with – slow bandwidth – and juxtapositioned it against a romantic situation to creatively play with the notion of waiting for a loading sequence.

He added that Mesh’s spot also demonstrated clever thinking, which again built an alliance with the user in demonstrating the value of the Vodacom offering.

Prakash Patel, who heads up Mesh, said he was thrilled with the results of his team’s first foray into The Creative Circle’s competition. “We’re a cohesive team of experts striving to develop interactions that count for our clients,” he said.

“Out in the market place, our work speaks for itself in that clients see positive results and we achieve the targets set for us. But it is always very gratifying to be recognised by our peers. Congratulations to the team responsible, and thank you to our counterparts at Draftfcb Johannesburg who supported us and worked with us to deliver such a high standard of work.”