Rethink can sleep extra well after winning the Grand Prix at this year’s Effie Canada awards.
The agency took the top prize for “Bedtime,” a campaign for IKEA that targeted Canadians who were up late on their screens, using its Swedish brand ambassador to promote its mattresses, beds and bedroom furniture.
Announced last night as part of the ICA’s Canadian Creative Effectiveness Summit, Effie Canada is the Canadian outpost of the global advertising awards that recognize marketing effectiveness and creative work that drove business and brand results.
Working with the retailer’s media agency Jungle Media, Rethink’s winning campaign used hyper-targeted pre-roll ads with creative customized to the time of night a viewer might be staying up late at night online, encouraging them to go to bed but also informing them when their nearest IKEA opened so they could buy a new mattress.
The campaign also won Gold in the Media Idea category, one of five winners that were in contention for the Grand Prix.
Cossette won two Golds, both for its work with SickKids. The first was for the “Crews” campaign, an execution as part of the “VS.” platform that rallied different groups within Toronto to raise the funds needed to build a new SickKids hospital. The second was in the Season Marketing category for “Get Better Gifts,” which used larger-than-life gifts to break through the noise and drive donations to patients and families spending their holiday at the hospital.
Bensimon Byrne won Gold in the Small Budget category for “Boys Don’t Cry” for non-profit White Ribbon, a campaign that showed how bottling up emotions can lead to some of the most damaging expressions of toxic masculinity.
Union rounded out the Gold winners with “Freedom Tampons” for Interval House, which used menstrual products to discreetly distribute information about how to leave abusive relationships.
The full list of Bronze, Silver and Gold winners can be found on the ICA’s Effie Canada website.
For its Grand Prix win – alongside Silvers for work with the Government of Ontario, IKEA, and A&W, and Bronzes for WestJet, IKEA and Kraft Heinz – Rethink was also named as the Effie Independent Agency of the Year.
Cossette was named Effie Agency of the Year fort its Gold wins, along with two Silvers for McDonald’s, and an additional Bronze each for SickKids Foundation and McDonald’s. SickKids was also named Brand of the Year at this year’s show.
