The Roger Garlick Award is a highly prestigious South African media excellence award, awarded to a single winner annually. It entails a lot of work so media planners often tend to let it slip by the wayside. Our campaign needed to motivate and encourage more planners to enter the awards.

The campaign cost 12% less than the previous year’s spend and resulted in an almost 80% increase in Roger Garlick entries.

We engaged each planner directly by sending each and every one a personalised full size, mocked up front page of our national Sunday newspaper featuring them as the Roger Garlick winner, reporting back from glamorous Cannes (the winners prize), with a diary written in the first person describing their wonderful week. Being the Sunday “front page” highlighted the prestige and newsworthiness of winning while personalising it ensured it would be kept, forming a constant reminder and motivator.

This never-been-done-before campaign surprised and engaged planners, instantly establishing high awareness of the competition and providing a targeted, individualised call for entries, with no wastage. Seeing themselves portrayed as the winner (and reading of the winner enjoying their Cannes prize) formed a big motivation to enter. The page made compelling reading and the individual pages were displayed all over media departments, keeping awareness levels high and forming a talking point and constant reminder to enter.

Previous campaigns used traditional media to call for entries - with average results. Planners are very busy and the lure of winning is often not strong enough to justify the time required to enter. Also the prize of a trip to Cannes (while substantial) means little to those not familiar with the festival. We decided to reach each planner in South Africa individually, by personalising the call for entry to make it alluring and directly relevant to them. Using the individual’s photographs and names on the front page of the newspaper, as the winner, ensured we broke through clutter and found a highly receptive market.