Award Winning Blog

Is what you're reading right now. That's right, folks. Tales from the Expedition, the Francomedia blog has won a Gold Hermes Creative Award!

The unique design of the blog surely swayed the judges as it really is a compelling design (thanks Francomedia design team!) - it was not an easy design to work with, but we have the technology (thanks Francomedia development team!).

Through weekly(ish) updates, we try to keep our customers and the viewing public aware of what's new in advertising, marketing, design and of course, Francomedia.

Updating a blog does take significant effort and many of our staff contribute to Tales from the Expedition. So, thank you for reading our blog and don't be shy, hopefully there are posts you feel worthy of sharing, go ahead - we're down with that.

Over the last couple of years Francomedia has been on the receiving end of many awards for their creativity, design and marketing - this is thanks to a great team of creative thinkers and doers - and I thank you for that, Francomedia team.

Another International Award!

The Francomedia mailbag arrived yesterday with some great news; an announcement from the Association of Marketing and Communications Professionals... we won a Platinum Ava Award!

The international Ava Awards recognizes outstanding work by creative professionals involved in the concept, writing, direction, shooting, and editing of video production, tv commercials, news, and programs, as well as new media.

In our case, we won in the new media category of "Web Development and Interactive Contests" for our work on the "Experience the Node, Alternate Reality Game (ARG)". The platinum award is the top honor.

The ARG that we developed along with our client, The Node Gaming Centre, has won top honors in the MarCom awards as well, so we can now say that it was a multiple award winning promotion!

Developing an ARG is an arduous task, it takes many hours of planning and many more in execution, in all nearly 500 hours were put into making the game a success internationally. The team working on this project, which included members of The Node as well as Francomedia, developed 4 videos that were placed on YouTube as part of the game, as well as 6 web sites, a forum, a database and used multiple social medias, forums and communication methods to both tell the story and execute the game (YouTube, Flicker, Facebook, Craigslist, UnFiction, IRC, blogs).

The ARG was developed to launch a new LAN Gaming Centre in Calgary last summer, the ARG created a buzz, garnered some traditional media attention and gave The Node a very cool story to tell as their brand grows and expands.

Just for the record, here are the hero's that worked on this project (alphabetically):

Sandor Fekete
Ryan Ferrier
Kevin Franco
Kaya Konopnicki
Dave Kromand
Tim MacRae
Colin Stange
John Thomas

So, to everyone who worked on this project, a great big thank you - it took a lot of creativity and a lot of hard work.

Why We Don't Enter

Clients sometimes ask, "Why don't you enter this into an advertising awards competition?" And, quite frankly, it's a good question, one that needs answering.

So, here it is - Francomedia's official stance on advertising awards:

First, let me state that our only purpose, the reason clients hire us in the first place, is to sell their product or service. As a creative agency, we do this through a multitude of different ways. We create advertising and marketing programs, build brands, design offers, create packaging and advertise - all to entice the consumer to buy more of our clients' goods or services.

Don't forget, we do need to be creative in order to accomplish this goal. Advertising awards have been set up to 'reward' this creative thinking, further the industry and fuel future creative thought. Sounds good, don't it?

Here's where things break down though.

Advertising awards are judged on creativity alone not results and that's where we have a problem.

We are in the business of results, most often, we do this through creativity. You see, creativity is just a tool that we use to accomplish the goal. Currently, advertising awards reward the use of this tool, but it's measured on intangibles and is very subjective. Our position is that advertising awards should be based on results.

For us to approach a job with the focus on winning an award, it detracts from the purpose of why we were hired in the first place. And that's not good for anyone.

Does this mean advertising shouldn't be creative? Hell no, advertising should be creative, it has to be if it's going to reach the consumer, but not just to be creative for creatives' sake, it has to be purpose oriented.

So, to our customers that are reading this... sleep tight, knowing that we've got your interests at heart, not ours. And, that's why we don't enter client work into advertising award contests... not until they measure on results, that is.

Now, this doesn't mean we won't flex our own creative muscles from time to time and enter some of our own materials in advertising or creative awards.

In the case of our own materials, awards can be construed as the results.