Advertising agency registers Nigeria on intercontinental creative award map
Since two or three years ago, Nigerian agencies have always competed heartily in the Loeries and this year was no different. While the outcome may have been less than desired, one agency was able to register the name of the country on the medal table.
With this yet, another achievement by the agency, it is believed that this will prompt more creative agencies from Nigeria to enter some of their excellent works to compete for the elusive Gold and Silver at the Loeries Creative awards next year.
Loeries is Africa and the Middle East’s premier award that recognises, rewards, inspires and fosters creative excellence in the advertising and brand communication industry. Winning a Loerie is the highest accolade for creativity and innovation across our region. The Loeries promotes and supports creativity by helping marketers, agencies and consumers appreciate the value of fresh thinking, innovative ideas and outstanding execution.
Up in the Sky, one of Nigeria’s vibrant advertising agencies that believes in the power of agency/client collaboration recently won bronze in the Internet Video category at the grand finale of the 40th anniversary of the Loeries 2018 Creative Week. In a day that looked like Nigerian agencies and the nation’s advertising industry would miss out of the annual Loeries Creative Week for 2018, the Oje Ojeaga – led advertising agency saved the day for the country by winning bronze medal and put the name of the nation’s advertising industry on the medal table of Africa’s most prestigious awards.
The work that earned Up in the Sky the bronze medal is Closed-A Short Film that tells the story of a young man who is struggling to make meaning of his world. It is an amazing short film that tells the story of shame, confusion and hope which was crafted for 9mobile (Etisalat) to promote Etisalat Prize for Literature.
Aside the recent feat in Durban, South Africa venue of the Loeries 2018 award, the creative work Closed-A Short Film has also won awards in Nigeria (LAIF awards), West Africa (Pitcher Awards) and Africa/Middle East with the Loeries. The importance of this has manifested in the number of briefs Up in the Sky has received from local and international clients based on it and the other creative works. This can be safely said it has been a good testimonial for the agency’s capability.
Closed-A Short Film is a 30-second short movie that won bronze for its effective communication and great impact in the Internet Video category at the Loeries 2018 Awards, a proudly not-for-profit company that promotes and supports creativity by helping marketers, agencies and consumers appreciate the value of fresh thinking, innovative ideas and outstanding execution.
According to Oje Ojeaga, Chief Executive Officer of Up in the Sky, “For last year’s Prize for Literature Campaign, 9Mobile wanted to push the envelope when it came to storytelling like never before. By opting to create a short film instead of an advert and drawing attention to the widespread problem of illiteracy, we the agency were challenged to find a convergence point for literature and film. It was a challenge we tackled with enthusiasm. Our aim was to tell a story without any dialogue that would still speak to hearts and minds and we are pleased we succeeded in doing that.”
The two-day award ceremonies that took place on Friday 17 and Saturday 18 August, hosted by Donovan Goliath, saw 287 Loeries awarded across 14 categories including six Grands Prix, 31 Golds, 69 Silvers, 113 Bronzes, 18 Craft Golds and 50 Craft Certificates.
More than 2,500 entries were received, with 15% of entries from outside South Africa. A total of 700 brands were represented by 265 agencies from 15 countries across Africa and the Middle East. The awards were judged by over 170 regional and international industry leaders in their fields including international jury presidents Fabian Frese, Ian Mackenzie, Nicolas Courant and Sebastian Padilla.
Culminating in the biggest creative gathering in the region, Loeries Creative Week brings together the best innovative minds from the industry for a festival that offers networking, creative inspiration and the recognition of great work.
Up In The Sky, known for the quality job and detailed execution is a startup agency excited to create campaigns that make a difference…delivering creative work that is truly creative. Its lean team is proficient in building and executing campaigns across ATL, BTL AND TTL channels.
Speaking on the agency’s quality of work, Idiare Atimomo, Chief Operating Officer of Up in the Sky said, “This award validates now more than ever that quality wins over quantity. Good creative work has universal appeal – it transcends language or even culture. As much as we are happy to have won a bronze medal on our very first submission, we believe we can do much better in the future – and will be working towards it.”
As part of the agency’s future plans, Oje explained, “To be able to compete at the highest level, we need to master excellence in the work we do for clients. Not just in ideation. Not just in execution. Our entire pipeline must be engineered to deliver work that holds up to scrutiny from judges around the world.”
On the award-winning creative (Closed-A Short Film), Oje explained how the agency got its inspiration to create a winning work. “All our work is a team effort. We knew the core idea was to show how a life of illiteracy closed you off from the rest of the world – we just had to find a way to execute that idea that was not obvious and could be done without a single word spoken on screen. The director, Tolu Ajayi was as passionate about the idea as the client was and made invaluable contributions to the script at multiple points in the process. From the initial idea we had we built the script further to capture universal human emotions and clearly the cast also delivered in their performance.”
Agencies compete at pitches to win business, compete for talent to deliver great creative work and compete at awards to benchmark their work against high standards of the profession. This show that winning awards are not for any ego – they are a validation of the quality of work. It is also an incredible morale boost for the team to do more, and encouraging them to come up with even bolder ideas.
Oje added, “The meaningful impact of this creative can, however, be seen in the comments the agency receives from non-practitioners, the general public – those who felt a strong compassion and understanding for people who are illiterate only after watching CLOSED for instance. That is when we really feel we have made something meaningful and we tend to get such strong emotional responses from the public to all our award-winning work. Finally, and maybe most importantly, quality awards are a reassurance to the client that you can indeed win new customers and awards at the same time.”
Talking about the impact of the creative, Idiare said, “it has made our existing clientele explore communication options beyond regular advertising. Films like CLOSED are the future of advertising; if we don’t make them, someone else will. Our operational philosophy has not changed – we love to do good work that works. Our vision for the agency has been to help demystify the practice of advertising by working on our mission which is to deliver simpler, better and faster creative solutions for our clients at all times.”
Commenting on the recent feat of Up in the Sky at the Loeries 2018 Creative Awards, industry analysts say the agency has been able to give a good account of itself as a creative agency to look out for. According to them, ads that speak to shared human experiences tend to perform better on the international scene. For obvious reasons, if an ad requires a lot of specific cultural reference to be understood, it becomes harder for an international jury to appreciate it. Universal experiences like joy, fear, shame, pain and happiness deployed with skill in an ad will speak to any jury around the world, and this is the way to go.