‘Best Job in the World’ triumphs at Lions

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‘Best Job in the World’ triumphs at Lions

23.06.2009
As the first of four Lions Awards ceremonies took place at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, the honours belonged to Australian ad agency Cumminsnitro, which stormed through to take two Grand Prix awards.

Cumminsnitro’s ad campaign to find a caretaker for an island in the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia, which was entitled ‘The Best Job in the World’ (pictured) was awarded the Grand Prix in both the Direct and PR categories.

The campaign, which was driven by online job sites and small display ads, was wildly successful, resulting in 36,648 applicants from 206 countries. In 56 days, the campaign website islandreefjob.com had 6,849,504 visits, 47,548,514 page views ,with an average of 8.62 minutes spent on the site.

Queensland Tourism has estimated media coverage as a result of the campaign at over US$100m from a campaign budget of US$1.2m.

The Lions inaugural PR category, for which Cumminsnitro won the Grand Prix, received 431 entries, with the jury choosing to award 17 PR Lions from an initial shortlist of 37.

Japanese agency Beacon Communications from Tokyo were triumphant in the Promo category, winning the Grand Prix for their entry ‘Yubari’ to promote the Yubari Resort. A further 10 gold, 9 silver, 24 bronze lions were also awarded in the category from a total of 1118 entrieswhittled down to a shortlist of 143.

In addition to Cumminsnitro’s second Grand Prix, 11 gold, 12 silver and 26 bronze Lions were awarded in the Direct category, from a total of 1364 entries, of which 180 were shortlisted.

The prestigious Direct Agency of the Year award was won by Shackleton, Madrid.

Leading the Promo Jury was William Rosen, President and Chief Creative Officer of Arc Worldwide, North America. Lord Tim Bell, Chairman of Chime Communications was president of the first PR Jury and David Sable, Vice Chairman, and Chief Operating Officer of Wunderman headed up the Direct Jury.