Lowe Sydney’s fake Ghanaian fan club created to promote a soccer match between the Socceroos and Ghana has just won Gold at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. It was a radical but very effective strategy that paid dividends for the Lowe client Football Federation Australia.

Lowe Sydney has just launched a new advertising campaign for Aussie, with a new slogan to match: “Put yourself in a better place”. The TVC is part of a multi-million dollar push which will include TV, print, digital and outdoor.

“Put yourself in a better place” mirrors the aspirations of Aussie’s customers. The “better place” could be a new house, a car, a holiday, or something intangible like financial security. The campaign positions Aussie as more than just a home loan lender, and provides a platform for us to promote a whole suite of financial service products - including credit cards, car and personal loans, and insurance.

Lowe Sydney’s Uzbekistan soccer film has now clocked up nearly half a million views on YouTube alone. It’s a tough act to follow, but here are two more extreme training follow-ups. This time, we’re promoting the Socceroos’ World Cup Qualifying Series matches against Bahrain and Japan.

The TVCs are shown below: click here to see the viral versions for Bahrain or Japan.

Special thanks to Scott Otto Anderson and Oliver Lawrance at Photoplay and the VFX team at Fuel for helping us put together three great pieces of film!

The honours continue to roll in for the Genesis Energy Tree People campaign. It’s just won Silver at the world’s leading creative direct marketing awards, the John Caples Awards held in New York. (No Gold was awarded in the website category.)

Lowe Sydney’s Welcome Snoop campaign for MTV Australia also picked up a Silver, this time in the Integrated Campaigns category, to supplement our three Finalist placings.

We’ve just created a viral campaign for Football Federation Australia, to promote the FIFA World Cup qualifying series. And already it’s the fifth most-watched sports clip in the world on YouTube, and the 54th most-watched clip of all.
 
Many Aussies think that the Socceroos are sure to qualify, so we’ve adopted an unorthodox strategy: we’re promoting the opposition. They’re fierce adversaries capable of knocking Australia out.
 
Check out the Uzbeki training film on YouTube, and you’ll see what we mean. It’s already notched up 180,000 views.
 
Those Aussies who haven’t seen the viral will see a TVC on air (below). We’ve commandeered the training footage for a national TV push to directly promote sales to the game. There will be radio and press advertising in support: the premise is Qualification Just Got Harder, and we’ll be evolving this campaign with follow-up activities for the upcoming clashes with Bahrain and Japan.

We had a great result at the huge AIMIA digital awards show on Friday night: Tree People won the Effectiveness category, giving us our second statue in two years. (Last year, our online game ElectroCity won the ‘Best Science, Health or Environment’ category.)

AIMIA is the Australian interactive industry’s longest running and most prestigious awards, and like the Oscars, there is only one winner per category. So we’ll be giving this trophy pride of place on our mantelpiece.

Our very own Tom Markham is one of only three Australians selected to judge the Innovative Advertising category at the New York Festivals. After a wild night celebrating at The Ivy, Tom was slightly crestfallen to discover that he would not be jetting across the Pacific in a shiny new Airbus A380. Instead, he will be judging online from his cramped living room in Abbotsford.

Tom is now eating pastrami on rye three times a day and playing old Lou Reed albums to psych himself up to watch 250 marketing case studies. Interesting factoid: although these entries are sent from the furthest-flung corners of the globe, most feature a female voiceover saying, “With limited money and no time, we needed to connect with consumers in a new and exciting way.”

Aussie is Australia’s biggest name in non-bank retail financial services, and they’ve just selected us as their creative agency.

Everyone here is thrilled at the result: winning a big pitch is always tough, but winning a client with Aussie’s heritage and presence is especially rewarding.

Stuart Tucker, Aussie’s GM Marketing, said: “Lowe has impressed us since day one of the pitch process and have demonstrated an ability to understand Aussie and its customers, as well as delivering insightful ideas across the business.

We’re looking forward to doing great work - and making a real difference to Aussie’s business.

Last month we re-launched Geekmail - our monthly wrap-up of interesting digital campaigns, trends and opinions. January’s issue covered puppies, hamburgers, assault rifles, Obama, and the creation of a $300 million button. Have a read here or, even better, sign up yourself. February’s issue will be out in a couple of weeks.

Lowe made a clean sweep at AWARD, picking up the top agency accolade as well as a huge haul of pencils.The MTV Welcome Snoop campaign collected two Golds, two Silvers and six Bronzes, making it the most successful Australian advertising campaign of 2008.Tree People, Lowe’s website for Genesis Energy, rounded off the night with a Bronze in the hotly-contested Interactive category.Then, just 24 hours later, Snoop picked up ‘Creative Award of the Year’ plus two Golds and a Silver at ADMA.Agency staff are pleased, fo’ shizzle.