BBDO Canada Wins Big in Dx3 2013 Advertising Challenge

March 8, 2013

BBDO’s Toronto office took home top honours at yesterday’s Microsoft Advertising Xbox Challenge at the Dx3 Conference in Toronto. In designing a strategy for Movember Canada, BBDO’s creative director has won a trip to the Cannes Lion Advertising Festival in Cannes, France.

Five competing Canadian ad agencies had 27 hours to develop and pitch a fully immersive digital campaign using MSN, Xbox, Skype and other Microsoft Advertising platforms for Movember.

Matt Matheson, a judge at the competition and PR and Communications Manager at Movember Canada, said that the agencies were evaluated on strategic relevance, creativity, use of technology and user experience. The four keys areas are meant to catch a glimpse of how agencies can provide a creative and “mo bro” friendly experience for this November’s campaign.

“One of the reasons why the pitch resonated so much was because it really did bring the Movember brand on board,” said Matheson. “It spoke to that idea of a fraternity of mo bros getting together and going through a journey together.”

Matheson mentioned that BBDO’s pitch, “checked off all the boxes,” and it firmly felt like a Movember idea. “At the end of their presentation we could see that there was that strategic relevance, and that it was going to drive participating mo bros to register, so that’s the end goal.”

The five advertising agencies’ responses had to utilize Microsoft Advertising digital advertising platforms including Skype and Xbox. All teams had just over five minutes to deliver a detailed pitch including solutions to what they felt were some of the issues hindering men taking an active approach to fundraising on Movember.com.

Along with the Cannes trip all other members on the BBDO presenting team will take home an Xbox and Kinect prize pack.

Sitting alongside Matheson as one of the other judges of the competition was Andrew Mallard, assistant communication and content manager at Movember Canada. “It was great to see the five agencies actually taking the time to do this competition,” he said. “We couldn’t thank them enough for trying to influence the brand that they were part of and you could see that most of them were actually mo bros and mo sistas as well.”

“This is a very great environment for business professionals, entrepreneurs, brands, digital and non-digital companies to learn about all the different tools and avenues for them to excel, grow and engage with consumers,” said Matheson. “All these different digital solutions and different ways to engage the consumer help to develop that landscape.”

Prior to the competition Ron Tite said he was excited to see such an initiative at this year’s conference and that he was looking forward to seeing the different ideas. “Not only does Movember make the world a better place through their work driving awareness of prostate cancer and male mental health issues, they are also a brand that truly inspires creativity,” said the content curator at Dx3.