This week is good news week at Lowe Sydney. (And not just because we’re all off on holiday soon.) We’ve just heard that we’ve got four Finalist nominations at the global Caples Awards held in New York: two for our Socceroos viral campaign, one for our cutting-edge iamunique microsite for Foxtel, and one for our Google-mashup ‘Welcome’ Pack DM for Aussie.

Then we opened the B&T end-of-year roundup issue and saw that the Omo Dust Storm execution was #7 in B&T’s Top Ten print ads of the year. But best of all, new Lowe Digital CD Melissa Peters was #3 in B&T’s Who’s Hot And Who’s Cool rankings!

Melissa, it’s official: you are hot!

Lowe Sydney has appointed Melissa Peters as its digital creative head in Australia following the promotion of Tom Markham to head the digital team at Lowe Worldwide in New York.

Melissa joins from Melbourne digital shop Citrus. Prior to that she was at Clemenger Harvie Edge. She has also worked at DDB, ThruThe Line, George Patterson, Y&R and Mojo. Melissa also has international experience, working as a creative consultant for Bates Vietnam, where she launched the country’s first pre-paid mobile card for telco MobiFone.

Melissa was a finalist at Cannes and the Caples last year for the Mazda3 campaign, and has previously won MADC and ADMA awards for her integrated campaigns.

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.

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.

Lowe has helped create a new landmark for women’s sport in Australia.The agency has launched the new national soccer competition – the Westfield W League – by casting a glamorous new light on Australia’s top female soccer players.

“Girls play soccer differently to guys,” says Tony O’Halloran, Head of Strategic Planning. “Some argue that women’s  football is more ‘skill-centric’ and less about the overt competitiveness and theatrics of male football.”

The result was ‘Football With Style’ – a campaign that mixes the grace and athleticism of women’s soccer with the glamour more often associated with the worlds of music, film and fashion.

The high-energy imagery created by Lowe is now centre-stage at Westfield’s 44 Australian shopping centres, which attract more than 8 million customers per week nationally.

Upstairs at the Lord Nelson Hotel, the staff of Lowe recently got very cozy during their mid-year dinner. A chilly evening ensured there was plenty of red wine consumed – possibly the catalyst for an impromptu breakdancing display performed while the night was still relatively young.

Our Head Strategic Planning Tony O’Halloran and Lowe ECD Dave Johnson recently delivered a combined presentation to The AFA Graduates on ‘The relationship between strategy planning and creative’. The talk was incredibly well received, with feedback from almost every grad being that it was the best agency presentation they had had all year.

Check out The Campaign Brief Creative rankings for 2008, which have us placed at No.3 in Australia, and No.2 in Sydney.

Stocked and ready for Lowe and Rivet’s mid-year festivities!

Lowe is proud to announce the newest instalment in the Carefree Barely There TV campaign. Moving on from the previously successful ‘festival’ TVC, we’ve continued the music theme into the world of night clubs. Shot over two days and two very long nights at some of Sydney’s hottest nightspots, the TVC utilises stop-frame photography to convey the passing of time; a whole night of partying.

Lowe’s ‘Welcome Snoop’ campaign has won a Gold Lion in the Promotions category and a Silver Lion in the Direct category at the 2008 Cannes Festival.

Lowe & Rivet Sydney have won a Silver Clio for Innovative Media, a Silver Clio for Content + Contact and a Bronze Clio for Innovative Campaigns, all for the MTV Networks ‘Welcome Snoop’ campaign.

Lowe and Rivet are very proud to announce that our campaign for MTV Australia - Welcome Snoop - has won the Most Outstanding Short Form Program at the ASTRA Awards.

The ASTRA’s are subscription television’s night of nights. More than 1000 people attended the gala event, created to recognise excellence in subscription television.

Check it out by clicking here

The One Show celebrates its 33rd year in NYC, and this year Lowe and Rivet’s “Welcome Snoop” campaign has been chosen as a finalist in two categories -

COMMERCIALS OF VARIOUS LENGTH - CAMPAIGN

and

INTEGRATED BRANDING - CAMPAIGN

Check it out here >>

Nathan Lennon and Dave Gibson have recently returned from a two year stint in London, most notably at BBH, working on Vodafone and British Airways. Upon arriving back in Sydney they did a freelance spell at Publicis Mojo before making the trip down to The Rocks and delightedly joined Lowe and Rivet.

Copywriter Lennon enthuses “We’re incredibly happy to come in out of the rain, as it were, and nestle into a permanent role at Lowe Rivet, in what is an extremely exciting time for the agency. There’s a proper sense of opportunity here with a portfolio of great brands, a brilliant CD in Dave (Johnson), who has boundless creative energy and, refreshingly, an uncompromising shelter of support from the management right through to the account and strategic teams. There’s a heritage of brave, award-winning work in the Sydney office, and this is reflected in the confidence the (Lowe) network itself has in us to continue and build on this and we’d be immensely pleased if we can help make this happen.”