Sir Mary picks up a Graphite Pencil at the 2020 D&AD Awards

For the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Fold 5G, Sir Mary developed a typeface and launched a teaser campaign with a coordinated influencer action. Now, with the "WTFold" campaign, the agency was able to snag two places on the shortlist in the categories "Typography/Integrated" and "Typography/Type Design" and even takes silver in the category "Typography/Posters" and the Graphite Pencil respectively. So far, Sir Mary is the only Swiss agency to win an award in this year's prestigious creative competition.

Sir Mary co-founder and Chief Creative Florian Beck is delighted with the award - but still takes a skeptical view of awards in the advertising industry, as he explains in an interview.

Werbewoche.ch: Florian Beck, this is the first ever D&AD Pencil for Sir Mary. What does this award mean for your agency?

Florian Beck: It's not relevant for business. For our employees, it's a great recognition for their daily work. And for me: Wow, have I grown old. Almost 20 years ago, I was on the jury at D&AD. As a youngster.

Can you briefly explain what the campaign for Samsung is all about?

It's the launch campaign for Samsung's first foldable smartphone. In a hard-to-reach target group for Samsung - young fashion and lifestyle-savvy opinion leaders, not "techies." And without showing the product. The fact that Samsung ultimately fully supported this idea - despite postponing the product - is the greatest success for us.

Who was in charge of Sir Mary? 

The entire Samsung team, including the customer, fought for it. There is no other way to implement such an idea.

Once the typography was in place, it was played out with an influencer and outdoor advertising campaign. Why this combination?

Because we were able to reach the target audience specifically through Instagram. If you make the target group part of the campaign, it's easier. Only after the biggest coordinated influencer campaign in Switzerland did we extend the idea classically.

In 2019, Sir Mary was Megaphon Newcomer of the Year in Berlin, which was duly celebrated. But you have also said that awards are "actually not that important" to you. Will you now also increasingly enter the international award hunt?

We discussed for a long time whether to submit the work at all. I'm very critical of the whole circus, precisely because I was once part of it. But I can also understand that our talented employees have an interest in awards. In the end, we decided to only submit this work to selected competitions. But that doesn't change the fact that the award business has no relevance in our day-to-day business. We want to use real briefings to develop outstanding communications that make our clients more successful. Just like with this campaign.

The award ceremony comes in the midst of the aftermath of the Corona crisis. How did Sir Mary get through the past months?

As things stand today, very good under the circumstances. But if you had asked me at the beginning of the lockdown, the answer would have been different. We first had to process and sort out the first wave of stops and postponements.

Are the next award-worthy projects already in the pipeline?

Thanks to Corona, there are plenty of ideas. We are also rethinking the agency, or rather, we have the privilege of building it the way we wanted from the beginning. Now we "just" have to get it on the ground. But that's another story. You can't submit that (winks).