Leo Burnett Sydney’s interactive ‘Run That Town’ campaign for the Australian Bureau of Statistics wins IAB Australia’s Creative Showcase 8.1

Leo Burnett Sydney’s interactive campaign for the Australian Bureau of Statistics, “Run That Town” has impressed the judges and has won the IAB Australia’s Creative Showcase 8.1. 

Lavender snapped up second place with its viral and innovative campaign “Pay With A Kiss” for Metro St James; while Havas Worldwide Sydney snared third place with its Virgin Mobile Australia campaign.

Leo Burnett’s campaign objective was to show disinterested Australians the importance of the latest Census data release and give them hands on experience with the data. Leo Burnett turned the Census data from every one of Australia’s more than 2,500 postcodes into a game “Run That Town” which lets users take control of their town, make decisions, and consult with locals modelled on their neighbourhood’s real demographics. Since release, the game has been downloaded over 61,000 times.

Says Mike Zeederberg, chair of judges and managing director of Zuni: “The campaigns entered in Creative Showcase illustrate the changing trends in digital marketing, and the complete integration of online and offline worlds was in strong evidence this round. The other key trend coming through was the opportunity for data visualisation, with a range of entries showing the engaging nature of being able to bring data to life, be that through social comments or other data.

“Appropriately then, the winning entry “Run that town” is a superb illustration of how to engage your audience with a traditionally boring set of data. The runner up “Pay with a Kiss” took the power of a fantastic creative idea and used digital to leverage it for great business outcomes.”

Lavender’s campaign saw it create a unique currency that tapped into Metro St James cafe’s French influence and let customers pay for their coffee by kissing each other. The viral campaign was fuelled through a YouTube video which has garnered over 800,000 views and a ‘Kiss Register’ app, which allowed couples to be shared on Metro St James’ Facebook and Instagram pages instantly. The campaign achieved publication in over 140 news sites across 29 countries and 586,000 mentions on the internet. The campaign’s success has led to an indefinite extension of the currency.

Havas Worldwide Sydney’s mission was to position Virgin Mobile Australia apart from its competitors and focus on rewarding loyal customers. The creative, personalised solution was to create a direct campaign celebrating each loyal customers ‘Virgin Mobile birthday’ with an email on their sign-up anniversary containing a music video celebration. Each video featured five personalisation points integrated within the video using a dynamic tracking technique – developed especially for this campaign – that transformed each video into an ode to the customer. This campaign achieved 90% email open rates for Virgin Mobile Australia.

The bi-monthly IAB Creative Showcase competition series, which is sponsored by Innovid, accepts entries for work completed in the two months prior to close of judging for each round and only one campaign per agency is allowed. The winners of each Creative Showcase automatically gains entry into the 2014 IAB Awards “Best of Creative Showcase” awards.   The winning entries are showcased at www.creativeshowcase.net.au.

8.1 Creative Showcase Winners

Winner: Run That Town

Creative Agency: Leo Burnett

Brand Name: Australian Bureau of Statistics

Second Place: Pay With A Kiss

Creative Agency: Lavender

Brand Name: Metro St James

Third Place: Cheers For All The Years

Creative Agency: Havas Worldwide Sydney

Media Agency: Virgin Mobile Australia