Connected Consumer Awards – the winners!

Pioneers of new advertising and commercial opportunities in the connected industry were celebrated at the inaugural Connected Consumer Awards last night, hosted atop the impressive Nomura building in central London.

“The Connies”, as they have come to be known, were hosted by chair of the judges, Graham Lovelace, alongside renowned media journalist Torin Douglas at the end of the two-day Connected Consumer conference and have now helped set an innovation bench-mark for the connected industry.

Virgin Media was awarded the Best Campaign as well as being named the Grand Prix Winner for its work on HTC One, with judges praising the project for its “huge consumer engagement whilst operating in a new environment.”

The HTC One project was also praised for its strong collaboration that saw it pull together technologies and multiple agencies in what Graham Lovelace described as the “closest thing to what the awards and, indeed, the Connected Consumer conference is really about – and, best of all, it really connected consumers.”

Commenting on the win, Virgin’s Ross Robertson said: “we’re chuffed to bits. It was an amazingly strong campaign for us – one of our first big campaigns across TiVo – so great to get recognition for that. It highlights what branded content can do on a TV platform and how consumers enjoy and watch that content.”

The Most Connected Agency was awarded to Mindshare in a closely fought category. However, it was the degree to which the company had “reorganised, restructured and refocussed to match the overwhelming pace of change” that saw it take home the award.

“Every agency short-listed in this category was very well regarded and demonstrated a clear cultural change,” said judge Mark Cross, senior partner of Equal. “However, Mindshare’s client engagement was simply more overt and that swung it in an otherwise very tight call.”

“As an agency, we’ve gone through quite a transition over the last couple of years,” said Mindshare’s head of digital development Nick Adams after he picked up the company’s award. “we’ve got a new way of working and we’re evolving our planning processes, which allows us to tackle this new connected age in the best way possible.”

The Best Technology category was won by Civolution for powering “impressive, synchronised second screen experiences,” and providing “multiple second screen products and a whole series of solutions to create a workable product,” according to judge Stacey Anklam, managing director of Wolverine Consulting. “They have essentially created a market.”

The Best Innovation was awarded to Grand Visual for Openloop, a campaign management tool that enables live and reactive digital out-of-home campaigns to run on multiple networks and formats.

“It’s accessible, simple and usable,” said Mark Cross, explaining the judges’ decision. “It makes uptake of an emerging technology much more effective and this really felt like a genuine innovation.”

The Best Research category was won by Thinkbox for its ongoing Screen Life – a research project highly praised by judges for “dispelling myths and setting the record straight about the living room.”

Judge Richard Marks, founder of Research the Media, explained that the panel was looking for research that really helped the industry and although it was a close contest, Screen Life was just too strong not to be crowned the winner.

“This is the first time the awards have been on so it’s pretty amazing to win the first year,” said Thinkbox’s research manager Tijen Enver. “It’s a brilliant piece of research so it’s always great to get respect within the industry.

“All the others were brilliant papers – but I think Thinkbox’s was unique in that it’s a multi-screening piece – it’s a hot topic.”

Derek Jones, managing director of MediaTel, who organised Wednesday’s event said: “every entry we had for our very first Connected Consumer Awards was excellent. We’ve been genuinely surprised at just how hard it was for our judges to pick winners from such a great selection.

“A huge thanks to everyone for taking part. We really hope this will help set some benchmarks for the connected industry and we’d love to see the awards grow and provide inspiration for future projects.”

The awards were a part of the two-day Connected Consumer conference, a commercially-focused event that saw both live demonstrations of all the first, second and third screen technologies at iBurbia studios, followed by a day of lively panel debates with industry leaders in a range of specialist fields. More details, including photos, can be found here.