HaveYouHeard Group wins at New Generation Awards 2022
inBroadcasting and Brand Inc., two of the agencies within the HaveYouHeard Group of innovative and specialist creative communications businesses, have taken home metal from the 2022 New Generation Awards.
Honouring effective and creative campaigns in social and digital media since 2018, the New Generation Awards announced its 2022 accolades on Thursday September 29 at a gala event in Johannesburg, which was – appropriately – also livestreamed on YouTube.
inBroadcasting, the agency revolutionising broadcasting in Africa, won Gold in the Best Use of Technical Innovation by an Agency category for its work for Sportscene. This included developing a retail radio for the brand which has had amazing results in terms of audience growth and listener affinity.
The creative sponsorship agency from the HaveYouHeard Group, Brand Inc. was awarded Silver in the Most Viral Campaign category for its Thumbderdome campaign for The Toyota Gaming Engine’s FIFA 22 tournament.
“It’s always fantastic to see your work recognised by industry peers,” said HaveYouHeard Group Executive Creative Director Dan Berkowitz.
“We’re particularly proud of these wins because they are a great demonstration of the breadth of our offering as a group and also representative of our approach to creating innovative solutions steeped in insights that stand apart from what’s out there in the category.
“A big thank you goes out to our brave clients and, of course, to everyone at HaveYouHeard who make it happen.”
The campaign for The Toyota Gaming Engine ignited a spat between Jason Goliath and Kwesta that culminated in a feud-settling exhibition match hosted at the TTGE ‘Thumbderdome’ in front of a stadium crowd of cheering thumbs. This featured a live half-time performance from Kwesta’s own thumb and backing band ‘The Cuticles’, with thumbentary by local shoutcaster Sam ‘Tech Girl’ Wright and comedian Glen Biederman-Pam’s thumb.
Thanks to the agency’s unusual and highly engaging approach, Thumbderdome quickly gained traction on social with thousands of viewers drawn in by the drama, the rivalry, the action, and the shameless thumb puns.
Sportscene wants to attract a very savvy and digital youth audience. Being ahead of the trend is very important to this audience, so playing a generic FM station instore just wouldn’t resonate with this it.
The playlist needed to be than the traditional radio stations and clubs. inBroadcasting’s POA was to playlist new music before the major stations, and create opportunities for new emerging artists to debut on the instore audio space.
In addition to pinpointing who the audience was – what they liked, where they hung out, what they were trying to be seen as – tempo mapping helped the strategists to understand when they came into the store, what they were looking for and how they behaved at different times of day and on different days of the week.
Two of the decisions taken because of the tempo maps was to ‘up the tempo’ on Friday afternoons and included DJ mixes on the playlists over the weekends. This initiative won Sportscene an SA Hip-Hop Award for the coolest brand contribution to hip-hop, and the overall approach has been so successful that Sportscene now has its own recording studio to deliver on its audio identity.
