Swiss Effie 2016: The winners
On Thursday evening, May 19, 2016, the Swiss Effie Awards were presented for the 16th time at Stage One in Zurich, for the first time in ten new categories by task instead of by industry: 5 x gold, 6 x silver and 11 x bronze, as well as 33 Effie diplomas.
The awards went to the best communications campaigns of the past two years, with prizes going to the communications agency, the media agency and the client in each case.
In an award ceremony presented charmingly and efficiently by SRF presenter Annina Campell in front of around 400 guests, there were five golds to applaud. Gold in the "Activation" category went to the Mazda campaign "Voilà ma Suisse" by JWT/Fabrikant. The top award in the "Comeback" category goes to the UBS pension campaign by Publicis, which has already won several awards. Another "old acquaintance" wins gold in the "Content Hero" category: Jung von Matt/Limmat's Bergdorf campaign for Graubünden Ferien secures the next coveted trophy. The "Evergreen" gold is awarded to the Appenzeller campaign "Das Rezept bleibt geheim" by Contexta. And last but not least, Publicis secures the second gold of the evening with the successful rebranding "Orange is now Salt" in the "New New" category.
The most awarded agencies after a total of 22 awards were Wirz with six Effies, ahead of Jung von Matt and Publicis with four Effies each.
The Effie honors the demonstrable impact of marketing and brand communication. In order to meet the changing demands on communication in the digital age, the submission and jury process has been completely reformed along German lines. The ten new categories by communication topic - instead of by industry as before - much better reflect the complete spectrum of today's Markom tasks, as Leading Swiss Agencies President Geri Aebi explained in his introduction. This means that more non-classical cases can be submitted and awarded prizes, while at the same time the comparability of the campaigns submitted per category has been significantly improved.
Under the direction of Torsten Tomczak, Director of the Research Center for Customer Insight at the University of St. Gallen, 24 jury members from the client and agency sides as well as from academia and research judged the 105 campaigns submitted. In a carefully scrutinized, multi-stage and internationally defined process, effectiveness and creativity were compared to award the best with a Swiss Effie Award. (pd/uma/hae)
