2022 Beacon Awards winners announced

The industry’s finest media thinkers came together last night to shine a light on outstanding achievements at the 2022 Communications Council Beacon Awards.

The Awards, held in association with oOh!media, and hosted by Clint Roberts at Aotea Centre, unveiled a renewed look and format.

This year’s theme was “celebrating outstanding work” and the evening delivered kicking off with two golds in the Social Marketing and Public Service Category, one for FCB Media and Fire and Emergency New Zealand, and one for Together and Te Ara Ahunga Ora Retirement Commission.

FCB Media continued to shine throughout the evening, taking home a whopping seven golds and 10 silvers in total. These awards covered five different clients across six different campaigns and recognised work in 12 different categories.

For the first time the Sustained Success category was recognised as a prestigious award in which FCB Media took home gold for the work done with Water Safety NZ.

“We’re stoked to win Sustained Success the first year this category’s been promoted to one of the ‘big ones’,” says Anne Lipsham, Chief Strategy Officer for Media, at FCB Media. 

“It’s a perfect example of when media, data and creativity combine to stay true to an uncompromising audience led strategy. We thank Water Safety NZ for their trust and partnership over the last five years.” 

FCB kept the wins coming with golds in Consumer Services for the agency’s work with Mercury NZ on ‘Mercury Movers’, which also took home gold later in the evening in the Most Effective category.

The teams other golds were for Best Small Budget for the work they did with SEAT and Fire and Emergency New Zealand as well as a gold for the Most Effective category for their work with AMP New Zealand.

FCB Media Managing Director Terri Collier says the key to the agencies success “is great partnership that drives tangible business results”.

“We believe our secret sauce is the strength of our relationships with our clients, media owners and internally with our Creative and Data and Tech teams. We’re extremely proud of the work we’ve been able to deliver in 2021 across all our clients and that five of our clients have been recognised tonight.”

Together picked up six category wins and two major awards, collecting a second gold in Best Small Budget for their work with Te Ara Ahunga Ora Retirement Commission. However it was the company’s work with AIA New Zealand called “Owning the intent moment through real-time Search” that was the big winner of the night, taking home three golds in Best Use of Technology, Best use of Data, and Best Use of Search Engine Marketing.

This same campaign also took out the major award for the evening, Best in Show, with the international judging panel agreeing this was the standout campaign of the year. Together’s success was then rounded off by taking home the prestigious Media Agency of the Year award, sponsored by META, as well.

Rufus Chuter, Managing Partner at Together says the team was “massively stoked” about the win.

“For us, Agency of the Year is an award for our fantastic clients and everyone in the industry and at home that’s backed, encouraged and supported team Together. It was also amazing to win Best in Show with AIA and be recognised across so many categories. It’s great validation of our vision for where media’s heading and the ambition and collaboration required to get there.”

PHD Group also had a solid night, taking home two golds, one for the teams work with KFC in the Best use of Event/Activation category, and the other in the Most Effective category for “The socially distanced Daffodil Day” with ANZ.

The MediaCom team picked up three golds for their work with Lion in the Best Use of Content, Best Creative Media Idea, and Best Collaboration categories which solidified their position to also take home Advertiser of the Year.

Louise Bond, the Beacon’s Convenor of Judging, says it was “pleasing to see a wide range of clients/agency partners entering the awards with a very high standard of work overall”.

“It has been another tough year for the industry and yet we thrive due to the significant contribution that our industry has on client success. Increasingly the awards are celebrating work that is innovating through the use of technology and data that leads to clever use of media, strong strategic thinking with plenty of creativity. I’m excited for the future of our industry and congratulations to all the winners on the night. You are all very deserving.”

In a first for the Awards, the Rising Star was split into two awards, one for media agencies and one for media businesses.

In a testament to the rising talent of the industry, there were two highly commended – Kat Blackburn from MediaWorks, and Max Huang from Hearts & Science.

However the 2022 Rising Stars award, chosen by the Beacon’s steering committee went to Courtney Gatwick from MediaWorks and Tessa Hubbard from MBM.

NZME also had a good night, taking out both Sales Team of the Year and Media Owner Innovation of the Year much to the delight of the crowd. TVNZ was named Media Business of the Year with MediaWorks receiving a Highly Commended.

NZME chief executive Michael Boggs says being recognised “not only on a national scale at the Beacon Awards but also on a global scale at the INMAs is hugely exciting”.

“Our teams work incredibly hard every day to provide trusted, quality, engaging news and content for our loyal audiences across the country, as well as doing a fantastic job serving our valued advertising customers. These awards showcase the depth of talent we have across NZME including our newsrooms, commercial sales, digital and marketing teams, and I couldn’t be prouder of these big wins for our teams.”

TVNZ’s Commercial Director Jodi O’Donnell told StopPress: “TVNZ had a fantastic night at The Beacons – to be recognised by our industry peers as Media Business of the Year is so rewarding, and to take out 10 awards across a big variety of our campaigns was huge for us. I’m beyond proud of our team who had their fantastic work recognised last night.”

The evening was rounded off with the Sandy Smith Inspiring Individual Award, sponsored by Warner Bros Discovery, going to Gina McKinnon from Omnicom Group.  

For the full list of winners click here.

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