RadiumOne, VCCP, ITV, Trinity Mirror and Global triumph at 2017 Connies

Industry gathered together this week to celebrate the very best of new advertising, tech and commercial opportunities in the connected market at the fourth annual Connies – with RadiumOne winning the Grand Prix, and Freeview Australia taking the top prize in the International category.

RadiumOne (pictured above) was also awarded the prizes for Connected Campaign of the Year and Best Use of Connected Technology.

For Best Use of Connected Technology – a project carried out with ITV AdSync+ and the7stars to create a global first connecting live TV and online sharing – the judges praised the business for connecting new technology with established media to forge impressive results.

“What stood out most was putting new technology, with limited scale, at the heart of the overall campaign, then seamlessly integrating other elements for maximum reach and impact,” said judge Rob Ellison, senior comms planning manager UK&I, Unilever.

“Putting the consumer experience first and understanding the strengths and limitations of the technology was key to the success of the campaign.”

For Connected Campaign of the Year, RadiumOne, with partners ITV and the7stars, took the prize for linking live TV and online audiences for Iceland.

Judge Tracey Follows, chief strategy and innovation officer, The Future Laboratory, said: “The RadiumOne paper demonstrated large effects from an initially small budget, and fused the magic of mobile with the power of frozen to deliver very impressive ROI – and launch a platform that more and more brands now want a part of.

“All the entries had something innovative about them, signalling to the judges that the blend of data analytics, programmatic marketing, human creativity, inspiration and cross-platform measurement might finally be coming together beautifully in more and more connected campaigns in the future.”

In the Best User Experience – Beyond TV & Video category, Global’s ‘My Capital’ stood out above the rest for “bringing video and TV content to life” in an innovative way across a number of channels.

“In this ‘experience era’ creating authentic, nimble and personalised communication is needed more than ever, if an idea/brand or content is to resonate with an audience,” said judge Craig Tuck, managing director of RadiumOne.

“Global showed how this industry is rich in innovation and showed what is truly possible when multiple stakeholders come together and collaborate.”

Global

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Meanwhile, VCCP Media managed to impress the judges on more than one occasion and walked away with two gongs: the first for Connected Agency of the Year.

“In a closely fought category where all shortlisted agencies presented very strong cases to win, the judges gave the award to VCCP media because of connected values and behaviours that ran throughout their offering,” said judge Mark Cross.

“A consumer-first perspective that clearly connected across the brand, comms and data ecosystem from planning to delivery was impressive and supported by excellent client endorsement and case studies. All pointed towards a genuine cultural difference from the traditional media agency model.”

They also picked up the award for Best Use of Connected Data for their work with News UK, which focused on connecting content platforms, audience data and content to deliver audience growth.

VCCP

Judge Stacey Anklam, COO of autoGraph, said VCCP’s “holistic approach is a best practice example of what cost-effective digital marketing can deliver and how critical it is for publishers to utilize search and social effectively to drive traffic.”

In the Connected Media Owner of the Year category, Trinity Mirror Solutions fended off competition from Channel 4, Facebook and RadiumOne to take the prize.

“It is inspiring to see a more traditional media owner do so much to embrace digital change,” said judge David Pidgeon, editor of Mediatel Newsline.

“We all know how difficult and complex it has been for publishers in recent years, which is why judges were so impressed with Trinity Mirror’s efforts to take digital disruption and make it a part of their business strategy, linking audiences with advertisers across multiple platforms.”

Heralded a “great example of connecting two screens together and of using innovative research techniques”, ITV won the gold award for Best Research Project/Initiative, for its ‘second screen – the science behind programme apps’ work with Neuro-Insight.

“Research plays a vital role in demonstrating how connected services actually resonate with consumers and is also essential to demonstrate the commercial value of connected services to advertisers,” judge Richard Marks said.

“This year’s shortlisted entries cover diverse services and techniques, including second screen apps, social media, streaming audio, advertising viewability and chatbots. The judges felt that the Gold should go to ITV’s research, which used neuroscience to understand how viewers use second screen apps and to confirm their receptivity to advertising.”

The high standard of entries meant that a silver prize was also awarded to Global for its impressive work with MEC: ‘Listener ID by Global’s DAX’.

International categories

Host Jon Block

For 2017, the Connies brings together the established UK Connected Consumer Awards from Mediatel and the internationally based Connected TV Awards from Videonet, now part of Mediatel Events.

More than ever they recognise innovation and the emerging best practice from across all sectors of the media landscape, showcasing initiatives that meet the needs of leading media businesses and practitioners in delivering value to the connected consumer.

In the international category, Freeview Australia took the Grand Prix for its new mobile version, ‘One click live on the go’, after also winning the gold award for Best TV/Video Service Update or Launch.

Judge Ian Nock, managing director and founder of Fairmile West, commented that Freeeview Australia implemented the vision of the future of television delivery, offering the full range of services and on demand content on all devices.

“It is very ahead of the game for a free-to-air platform, was supported by broadcasters and resolved issues around multi-party content rights to make sure as complete a service as possible was available to the consumer,” he said. “It was a clear winner.”

In the same category, YouView took the silver prize for ‘Next Generation YouView’.

In the Video Technology Hero category, Harmonic took the gold prize for Harmonic Cloud-Native VOS.

Moving video processing and other headend functions onto standard IT hardware – whether hosted in data centers on-premise or in the cloud – is one of the most significant developments in television. It reverses the trend towards ever-more complex operations, which was dramatically accelerated during the multiscreen era. It also makes TV providers more agile and so helps them fight against increasingly powerful OTT rivals.

The judges felt that the immediate and obvious benefits from these cloud-native video workflow solutions, when combined with the positive impact this operations model will have across the television market, made it the most important technology in this category.

In the same category, Yospace and Sky Media were awarded silver for ‘DAI for Sky AdSmart on linear Sky Go services’, while NAGRA with Samsung took the bronze award for ‘TVkey’.

YouView

In the Contribution to User Experience – TV & Video category, YouView was awarded the top prize for ‘Next Generation YouView’, which judges universally praised for the scale, scope and timing of the service upgrade.

“YouView delivered significant user enhancements across the whole platform and ecosystem,” said judge John Moulding, editor-in-chief, Videonet. “Most importantly, the efforts paid back with increased viewing and engagement.”

In the same category Orange and SoftAtHome took the silver prize for ‘TV Lights’, and Verimatrix took bronze for ‘MultiRights DRM management for TV Everywhere’.

Derek Jones, CEO of Mediatel, said: “2017 recognises outstanding achievements from a variety of businesses operating in the connected market. It great to see how data-powered strategies are now really driving creativity and innovation.

“I’d like to extend my thanks and gratitude to everyone for taking part – and I look forward to seeing more great work in 2018.”

The awards will be followed by the Connected Consumer conference on 7 June where a selection of the winners will showcase their work.

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