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Port Elizabeth-based agency lauded at prestigious Cannes awards for innovative campaign to recruit doctors to rural Africa
A prestigious international advertising award bestowed on Port Elizabeth-based Boomtown advertising agency at a glittering international ceremony in Cannes returns home this week.
Boomtown, which this year celebrates 20 years in the industry, received a coveted silver Lions Health award at the inaugural Lions Health Awards at the Palais des Festivals in the star-studded French Riviera city recently (June 14).
According to the agency, the award has helped shine a spotlight on the region's rich creative talent - something which larger cities like Johannesburg and Cape Town usually enjoy accolades for.
The award was for the agency's successful and creative campaign to recruit doctors to work in rural Africa, for a company called Africa Health Placements (AHP). The health awards are new addition to the world-famous Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival held last week.
Boomtown creative director Andrew MacKenzie said the campaign combined two traditional mediums - direct mail and radio - to create "the world's first stethoscope radio advertisement". (For an overview of the campaign, as profiled at the Lions Health Awards, click here.)
"We recorded a 30 second radio ad and compressed the audio to the exact frequency and level which was only audible through a standard stethoscope," said MacKenzie. "Not only did the mailer spark huge interest from our target market, but it created a completely new medium to communicate to doctors - through their own stethoscopes."
The award - the highest accolade handed to a South African agency at the inaugural awards - was collected by Boomtown's creative group head, Tim Jones, who worked on the campaign. It takes the accolades received by Boomtown for the campaign to six (Note to editors: other advertising awards for the AHP campaign include a bronze Loerie, silver Clio, silver Clio Healthcare, gold Epica and gold Assegai). Jones returns home next week (June 24) with the award.
The company's success has helped dispel the myth that the Eastern Cape is lacking in creative talent, said Boomtown business development director Jane Stevenson.
"Our awards and work product are testament to the creative talent the Eastern Cape has to offer," said Stevenson. "With our core team here in Port Elizabeth, we're delivering top quality, edgy work and in turn people are seeing the region for the creative, talent-filled gem that it is."
The company's growth has also helped profile Eastern Cape talent, such as its recently completed TV advert for the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU). From the crew and actors through to the locations and actor John Kani's voice-over, the 30-second nationally flighted advert was a proudly Eastern Cape production.
Boomtown is also growing the region's creative talent through its upliftment programme, the Bayeza Initiative, which sees unemployed local graduates empowered. Formerly disadvantaged graduates are trained up by the company, giving their careers - and their CVs - a much needed kick-start.
Started in a small Port Elizabeth apartment in Central in 1994, Boomtown's growth and acquisition of top-tier national and international clients over the years has seen it take on the country's top advertising agencies. In the recently-published 2013 Creative Circle Agency Ranking Tables, Boomtown ranked fourth nationally in the Small Individual Agency category.
Boomtown coastal MD Glen Meier said the agency's awards were a product of its results-driven strategy which sought to deliver tangible outcomes for its clients.
Last year saw Boomtown literally boom, increasing its staff compliment by 20% and at the same time experiencing national revenue growth of 25% as it received the accounts of blue-chip clients such as Barloworld, SAB, Shatterprufe and Unilever.
