Decision Marketing at 15: Who's the boss of the DMAs?

Few would doubt that the DMA Awards, which in various guises can trace their roots back nearly 50 years, are the ultimate industry awards. Hats off to Cannes, John Caples and the D&ADs – even some rival marketing titles have had a go – but, when push comes to shove, for this industry, the DMAs have always been the ones to win.

Naturally, like any awards scheme, they are not without their critics, with many bemoaning the high entry fees and exorbitant cost of attending the awards ceremony. But, as they say, there is no such thing as a free lunch, and if you are going to actually enter awards, that comes with the territory.

And, with creativity, strategy and results all being scrutinised by a judging panel of senior marketers from clients, agencies and suppliers, what more could you ask for?

So, in the latest in our series marking Decision Marketing’s 15^th anniversary, we give you the lowdown on the biggest winners of the past decade and a half.

Back in 2010, it was the long gone but not forgotten Archibald Ingall Stretton which bagged the grand prix for its campaign to bring England’s rugby matches in 3D to O2’s customers.

The campaign saw the creation of 40 ‘mini Twickenhams’ at cinemas across the country, which, for the first time, broadcast the England games in 3D. Mimicking O2’s promotion of music events, it was conceived to help transform customers into fans of the brand. As well as generating £250,000 in ticket sales, the campaign resulted in more than 100,000 new consumers registering with O2’s Priority experiences website.

It claimed four golds in total, with AIS also picking up golds for a separate campaign for O2 and its campaign for Skoda UK.

In 2011, it was Bristol agency Indicia – which is now ADM Indicia – that scooped the top prize for online retailer Very.co.uk

Very.co.uk commissioned Indicia to help it enter the highly competitive mum-and-baby market, dominated by a number of big brands. An audience was built from users of mothers’ interest websites, such as Mumsnet, and were teased with backstage invitations to the fashion show. The campaign generated 121,000 microsite visits, 4,800 new customers and sold 11,000 products.

The campaign claimed gold in two categories, with the agency also picking up gold for Tourism Ireland.

By 2012, it was the turn of Ogilvy One to net the grand prix with its campaign for industrial weighing scales manufacturer Kern & Sohn, designed to help build its reputation and revenue in the global laboratory and education sectors.

The strategy was a worldwide experiment, aimed at creating a globally newsworthy campaign. Kern & Sohn customers and scientists around the world received a kit containing a set of scales and a garden gnome to test the theory that gravitational pull varies in strength depending on where you are in the world.

The story reached an audience of over 355 million in 152 countries. Two weeks into the campaign 16,386 websites had linked to GnomeExperiment.com, resulting in a 200% increase in traffic, an 11% sales uplift and 1,042:1 ROI. After a month there was a 21% sales uplift across the entire Kern & Sohn range.

The work picked up gold in nine categories, with the agency also landing gold for Drinkaware and nine silvers and bronzes for BA, IBM and American Express.

In 2013, WDMP – another agency which has sadly gone – scooped the top gong for a campaign for Monarch Airlines, to help it build its reputation and revenue in the ski market.

The resulting direct mail campaign brought the slopes to life by using mobile image recognition platform Blippar, and featured British Triple Olympian and brand ambassador Chemmy Alcott.

Designed to highlight the fact that, through Monarch’s new routes, skiers and snowboarders have new ways to access the best snow in Europe, the campaign delivered more than £2.2m in sales for the airline.

2014 saw Leo Burnett come out of top, with its Business in the Community campaign, Second Chance, which dominated the awards, picking up eight golds, four silvers and four bronzes.

The campaign was designed to get businesses to give ex-offenders a “second chance” by calling on UK employers to create a fair opportunity for them by removing the tick box from initial application forms which they have to tick if they have criminal conviction.

The agency with the most nominations, OgilvyOne, walked off with seven golds, including three for the British Airways campaign, The Magic of Flying, which had led the field at Cannes, and two for Dishoom Story Plates.

In 2015, Proximity London – now Rapp – walked off with the top prize, landing both the grand prix and five golds for the ‘Raising Eyebrows and Subscriptions’ campaign for The Economist.

The campaign gave The Economist new prospects, new revenue and a new profile for their target millennial audience. It clearly impressed the judges – this same campaign won the most individual golds, picking up five further awards. Proximity London won a sixth gold for client Capital One.

In 2016, Karmarama – now Accenture Song – scooped the top spot for its Unibet ‘Luck is no coincidence’ campaign, which featured a data-driven 6-episode and 30-“minisode” long series of films through content production division Kream.

Each film brought to life the core idea of luck being no coincidence and instead focused on the intersection point between sport, science, data and betting, thereby helping customers make more informed bets.

The following year, 2017, Karmarama became one of the first agencies to win consecutive grand prix, with its work for the British Army bringing home the spoils for the agency once again.

The ‘This is Belonging’ activity for the Army won the top prize thanks to its “intelligent use of data and creative implementation and outstanding results”. The activity also landed the agency three golds.

A year later, in 2018, MRM McCann – now simply MRM – landed the top prize for the Xbox Design Lab Originals: The Fanchise Model campaign for Microsoft.

The campaign, which encouraged Xbox fans to customise their own controllers and then profit from the sales if other gamers bought them, picked up the top award thanks to the “use of audience insight, a clever twist on personalisation and ultimately delivering great results for the business”.

Meanwhile, in 2019, Elvis “left the building” with the grand prix for its Cadbury’s “Hunt the White Creme Egg” activity, which also picked up two golds for best digital experience and best integrated campaign on the night.

The Mondelez-owned brand launched the “Creme Egg Hunt” strategy in 2017 but in 2019 it hacked other companies’ social media feeds, billboards, websites and live experiences by hiding a White Creme Egg in their advertising.

Consumers got clues from HuntTheWhiteCremeEgg.com and uploaded photos of the sightings to win prizes including 30,000 milk chocolate Cadbury Creme Eggs, 1,000 rare white eggs and £10,000.

The grand prix judging panel praised the campaign’s creative execution, integrated strategy and, ultimately, “fantastic results”, which saw sales of the brand rise by 9.9%.

In 2020, the awards were delayed until January 2021 due to the Covid pandemic, with Wunderman Thompson – now VML – scooping the grand prix for the first time in nearly two decades, with its Unscripted campaign for BT Sport.

For the winning activity, the agency was briefed to challenge BT Sport’s fiercest competitors in the battle for TV subscriptions. The resulting work was based on a script for the next football season. Written using AI and in collaboration with BT, Wunderman’s team commissioned the biggest brains in sports data, analytics and machine learning to write what it still claims is the first AI-inspired script of any football season anywhere on the planet.

The Unscripted campaign resulted in mass media coverage all over the world, gaining 137 million media impressions across 44 countries, but, crucially, it led to a 100% increase in subscriptions from the previous season, and that was what finally clinched it for the grand prix judging panel.

In 2021, it was the turn of Engine Creative – another agency brand that has disappeared – to take home the grand prix for its work for EA and The Kiyan Prince Foundation, Long Live the Prince,

Designed to raise funds for Kiyan Prince Foundation (KPF) and spread its anti-knife crime message to a predominantly young, urban and male audience by tapping into what would have been the 30th birthday of football prodigy Kiyan Prince, who was stabbed to death while protecting his friend from a knife attack.

Focusing not on his loss but instead celebrating the man he was destined to become, the activity saw a virtual Kiyan re-signed by QPR and given the squad number 30. Simultaneously, he was entered into FIFA 21 as a playable character with a boot deal from Adidas.

KPF raised three times its normal annual revenue in one day and educated young people through a coordinated social campaign and it continues to be successful in raising funds for KPF and increasing its profile among the young people it aims to help, plus the wider public.

In 2022, Ogilvy UK scooped the grand prix – its first for a decade despite dominating the shortlist for years – for its hard-hitting campaign for the Mayor of London, designed to tackle sexist attitudes and inappropriate male behaviour towards women and girls.

The “Have a Word” activity also scooped six golds on a night dominated by the WPP-owned agency, which also won two golds for Relate, and one apiece for Unilever, Vodafone, and Formula One.

The campaign was designed to get men to think about their own behaviour, and how they should challenge the behaviour of their friends, giving every man an active role in tackling the problem and creating change.

The following year, 2023, Hertford-based The Creative Consultancy became only the second regional agency to scoop the grand prix in over a decade, with its “Lighter Delivery” campaign for Royal Mail replicating the success of Bristol-based Indicia back in 2011.

The B2B campaign centred on Royal Mail’s claim to be the UK’s greenest delivery partner due to its reliance on “on-foot” deliveries. As a result, it produces half the CO2 per parcel of any of its competitors and wanted to share the message to open doors with C-suite decision-makers.

The agency developed a highly personalised “box within a box” mailer for each potential client in the target market. The larger box was the equivalent volume of carbon produced in a delivery by any other carrier; the smaller box was half the size, showcasing the 50% less CO2 produced by a Royal Mail delivery.

In terms of results, 60% of the brands scanned the QR codes on the boxes to visit the landing page. Royal Mail made contact with 100% of the target brands and booked meetings with several. The sales pipeline opportunity, as a result of the opened doors, has been identified at £27m: an ROI of around 346:1.

In 2024, Ogilvy UK once again netted the top prize – its second in three years after regularly dominating the shortlist – picking up the big gong for another hard-hitting yet controversial campaign for the Mayor of London, designed to tackle sexist attitudes and inappropriate male behaviour towards women and girls.

The “Breaking the Silence” campaign was part of a wider initiative from the Mayor of London launched three years before in the aftermath of the horrific Sarah Everard case. Led by a “Say Maaate to a Mate” interactive film, the activity gave viewers the option to intervene when a group of young men’s conversation became increasingly misogynistic.

The activity emerged as the most talked about campaign of 2023 and sparked fervent discussion amassing an earned reach of 3.5 billion. However, ultimately, it is claimed the campaign turned the target audience from the group least likely to intervene to the most likely.

Andm finally, this year, House 337 scooped its first ever DMA grand prix, picking up the top gong for the England & Wales Cricket Board “The Hundred” – a campaign that the judges found reshaped the cultural meaning of cricket and ignited a new generation of fans.

So, who’s the boss of the DMAs over the past 15 years? Well, put it this way, if he were still around, David Ogilvy would be putting up the bunting; to be fair, he is often described as “one of the true, original direct marketers”.

And, while nearly every agency in town – as well as the DMA itself – has long ditched the term “direct marketing” to disassociate themselves from its grubby image, by practising data-driven marketing, CRM, customer experience and one-to-one communications, Ogilvy One has proved to be the great survivor.

Decision Marketing at 15: Who’s the boss of the DMAs?

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