Cummins&Partners takes out Round 5 of Sirens with ‘Ball of Fire’ spot for Australian Open Tennis

Radio ads for the Australian Open Tennis have aced Round 5 of the Siren Awards, taking out the overall win, the single, craft and campaign categories. The single ad “Ball of Fire” by Cummins&Partners creative team, Chris Ellis (left) and Aaron Lipson (right), used audio from a miniature microphone attached to a tennis ball served at 234 km, to take radio listeners closer to the tennis action.

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To microscopically capture the sound for the winning ad “Ball of Fire”, a miniature ‘nano’ microphone was attached to a tennis ball on Centre Court at Rod Laver Arena and it won the director and sound engineer of the ad, Paul Le Couteur (left) from Flagstaff Studios the round 5 craft category.

The Campaign category winner was The Australian Open Tennis ad campaign called “Get Closer to the Action” from the Cummins&Partners creative team of Ellis and Lipson.  It was made up of the winning single ad, “Ball of Fire”, plus two additional ads also utilising the nano microphone audio, one on a tennis racquet string and another on a player’s foot in the ads “Slide” and “Strings”.     

Says Ellis and Lipson: “We love radio – compared to other mediums you can literally do anything. It’s easy to say ‘we’re broadcasting live from the lunar surface’, a lot harder to shoot.  Hopefully this will help us get more of our other clients to add radio to our upcoming briefs.”

The ads used the audio to encourage fans to get even closer to the action and buy tickets to the tennis and contributed to a record crowd of nearly 704,000 attending the tournament.

Says Joan Warner, chief executive officer of Commercial Radio Australia (CRA): “It’s fantastic to see agencies creatively capturing audio for radio ads and highlighting the ability of radio to get close and intimate with the listener.”

Four ads were awarded highly commended in the single category. Both “Slide” and “Strings” from the Ellis and Lipson from the winning Australian Open Tennis campaign. Plus “Men Like Us Like Valentines” for Bundaberg Rum by Scott Huebscher from Leo Burnett Sydney and the ad “Octagon” for Brownes Chill Double Espresso by Kurt Beaudoin from ad agency Meerkats.

Highly commended in the campaign category was a Tiger Air campaign by David Ponce de Leon and Alex Wadelton from McCann called “Infrequent Flyers Club”; the Marketforce campaign for The Muresk Institute called “Agricultural Innovations” by Guy Hamilton Howlett & Neil Martin and the Brownes Chill Double Esperesso campaign called “Ridciulously Full Flavoured” by Kurt Beaudoin from the agency Meerkats. 

Four ads were awarded highly commended in the craft category; “Slide” and “Strings” from the Australian Open Tennis winning campaign by Paul Le Couteur from Flagstaff Studio; “Men Like Us Like Valentines” for Bundaberg Rum from Song Zu and sound engineer Abby Sie and “Faulty Boom Gates” for RAC from Brainestorm and sound engineer Nick Gallagher.

The Gold Siren winner will be announced in May and receives a trip to Cannes to the Cannes Radio Lions, and two tickets to attend the festival. The client of the winning 2015 Gold Siren Award also wins a ticket to Cannes. Silver Sirens are awarded in each of the three categories: single, campaign and craft.The winners are decided by a panel of industry experts, made up of creative directors from leading ad agencies, known as the Siren Creative Council. There is also a client-voted award, a $5000 cash prize, awarded to the writers of the ad voted the best, by a panel of clients.

Round 1 of the 2016 Siren Awards is now open and entries close on 8 May, 2015.