B&T Awards – Best Indie Agency – under 50

CASE STUDY 1 – CHERY MOTORS

THE BRIEF

Establish Chery International as THE must-consider car brand in Australia.
Help OMODA 5 shine through in a cluttered auto market.
Identify The OMODA 5 key customer.
Encourage target customers to test drive and ultimately buy the OMODA 5 model.
Build the Chery International fanbase to facilitate repeat custom on later launches.

In order to tap into the OMODA 5-interested audience, we needed to utilise the media in a savvy way and reach people at a key decision-making point in their car-search journey.

We identified three key demographics: Young Families, Young Singles, and First Time Buyers & Parents. We later fine tuned this with interest-based targeting, looking at the Tech, Fashion, Lifestyle, and Parenting demographics. Our successful targeting strategies resulted in significant engagement, particularly from the Tech & Fashion audiences.

Our multi-layered media strategy was rolled out across several channels, with a focus on Out of Home (OOH). This included roadside billboards in five key sites across NSW showcasing our ‘Hello Cherry’ slogan beside high-impact OMODA 5 imagery.

The purpose of this?

To add a level of familiarity, making it appear as if OMODA 5 was already on the roads and subliminally establish it as a credible car choice for prospective buyers. This also showcased the model’s advanced technology with speech recognition, playing off the likes of Hello Google and Hey Siri.

With homepage takeovers, our advertising was featured on key national media titles from The Australian to The Advertiser and The Courier Mail, alongside all of Australia’s key Auto platforms.

Additional audio and TV campaigns on The Trade Desk further established our ‘book a test drive today’ messaging, while social media allowed us to take our key demographic targeting to the next level.

EFFECTIVENESS & SUCCESS

The PR results this campaign brought in were an astounding 1994 articles to date (figure correct as of late May, 2023), with a reach of 82,459,793 reads.

During this effective relaunch of Chery into Australia, over 360,000 individual people visited the website. 970 Brochures for OMODA 5 were downloaded, and an impressive 964 test drives were booked as a direct result of our media strategy.

Clever targeting enabled Awaken to reach people at a key decision making point in their car search journey and as a result, over 1,000 OMODA 5 cars were sold in the launch phase period, achieving above our launch KPI of 1,000 cars.

Through tracked media, we learnt our advertising alone drove a substantial footfall into the Chery dealership. This collectively resulted in the 1000 sales achieved over the launch phase period.

Each of the above points were achieved through direct licks from tracked media implemented by Awaken Media.

CASE STUDY 2 – CITY OF NEWCASTLE

THE BRIEF: In March 2022, Awaken Media was given the opportunity to deliver a launch media strategy that would change the perception of Newcastle as a blue collar, coal mining town. This was a chance to place Newcastle on the map for holiday makers, and those seeking a unique weekend getaway beyond the average coastal escape.

How would we do this? By creating a media strategy that would support Visit Newcastle’s destination brand platform ‘Seek Off Beat’. This would act as a quirky call to action, targeting people at each point of their travel-planning journey. Each piece of content would strategically encourage visitors to discover Newcastle’s eclectic side. In addition, New Annual – an arts festival targeted at driving local and regional visitation to the city – would be used as an added draw to the city.

Why would they choose Newcastle? World-class surf breaks, mountain-biking trails, kite-surfing beaches and paragliding points, nature reserves, mangroves and wetlands, a vibrant cafe culture, excellent eateries, plus a buzzing music and festival scene. Our media strategy used the ‘Seek off Beat’ platform as a springboard to highlight all of these selling points.

Where would our success be measured? With an increase of unique users to the Visit Newcastle website by a target of 150% compared to non-campaign periods, with visitors coming from our key target markets.

Who would we target? Our key demographic (and most likely to visit) was identified as families and young couples aged 25-44 residing in Sydney and regional hubs within 4hr driving distance.

THE CAMPAIGN:

Our task was to increase awareness of Newcastle and position it as a leisure tourism destination, while increasing website visitation to visitnewcastle.com.au and engage with content for more than 30 seconds.

Our media mix consisted of outdoor bus sides (colourful, supersized Seek Off Beat imagery on 14 public buses in key Sydney and suburban regions). This was supported by digital radio buy across the ARN network music and podcast streaming, plus video buys across YouTube.

To unpack the experience of visiting Newcastle as a short trip, we partnered with trusted lifestyle publications, Pedestrian TV and Broadsheet, creating recommendations of the best places to visit within the city. To drive traffic to the website, our strategy ran media across Meta and Taboola, directing browsers to specific content articles from visitnewcastle.com.au’s blog.

EFFECTIVENESS & SUCCESS

City of Newcastle received the 2023 award of Top Tourism Town in New South Wales by Business NSW. An incredible achievement, aided by the marketing campaign’s efforts and strategic media strategy.

In addition to this, the campaign delivered over 6.7m impressions, 900k video views and listens. Our media strategy contributed to an increase in website traffic compared to non campaign periods by 162%, beating the campaign target by 12%.

Awarded the 2023 NSW Top Tourism Town

BODY OF WORK

Awaken is a dynamic, full-service agency, maximising consumer attention through a comprehensive range of services and memorable bespoke campaigns. We understand every client is unique, which is why we never offer one-size-fits-all solutions. Instead, we follow a proven Awaken methodology to genuinely understand our clients’ needs and goals, developing and delivering fully-tailored solutions.

We create a positive impact for our clients and our impact delivers measurable results. Our continued success for our clients has sustained our growth.

Results speak louder than proof points, and our commercial impact is what keeps our client retention rates so high:

Jose Curevo – 179% sales uplift.
Chery Motors – 1,000 cars sold in the first three months.
Visit Newcastle – awarded #1 NSW Tourism Town.
Kraken Rum – 185% sales uplift.
Panasonic – #4 to #3 in the air conditioning category.
Oxford landing (formally Yulumba) – UK sales expansion.
The Kids Cancer Project – achieved the fastest rate of sign ups.

The breadth of Awaken’s abilities is demonstrated by the sheer diversity of our clients and their campaigns. We work with many SMEs, ranging from alcohol and electronics to construction, tourism and hospitality. Some highlights from the past year alone include:

Being named an Honoree in The Webby Awards in the category of Best Growth Strategy for our Jose Cuervo Sparkling Margarita campaign. We were the only Australian agency to be nominated.
We were called upon to develop a media and creative strategy for our regular client, Panasonic’s air conditioners, showcasing the key features of the technology in a humorous, yet informative manner across all screen sizes and social media platforms.
Also for Panasonic, we were tasked with increasing the number of audiences requesting a quote for their air conditioning installation over the winter period. This resulted in an increase in website visitors of 63% YoY.
We provide Pier One with an always-on media strategy across Facebook/Instagram and Google Search, advertising their hotel, food and beverage and events/experiences. This year, we rebuilt Google campaigns to have specific conversion goals, responsive ad creatives and included smart campaigns. This brought a 230% increase in conversions for the brand.
Startup beauty brand, Beached called on Awaken to help drive positive ROAS after initial struggle. Thanks to Awaken, Beached now has a full funnel strategy across multiple channels and continues to grow with revenue 250% higher since this was implemented.
Awaken were chosen to take on The Kids Cancer Project and refresh its annual The Better Challenge. Under our concept of ‘90K Any Way’, Awaken enabled this great cause to reach a wider audience and ensure cut through and impact in the lead up to Childhood Cancer Awareness month in September.
We created an emotion-led creative for Adora Fertility, positioning the brand’s IVF treatment as a reliable, affordable, but also magical option for prospective parents.

AGENCY CULTURE

At Awaken, our culture revolves around prioritising wellbeing for our tight-knit team of 25 core creators and marketers, plus a best-in-class crew for creative work and shoots. Our office and client-facing staff are in Sydney, but our network extends from Bateman’s Bay to Oaxaca, Mexico to Paris, France. Our strong team culture is shaped by how we effectively connect and deliver work.

We prioritise people’s wellbeing, not just because it produces exceptional client results, but because it’s the right thing to do. This means our people stick around and grow with us. We’re exceptionally proud that we’ve maintained a 100% retention rate over the past 5 years. Under the recent launch of Awaken Brands, we have created an employee share scheme, allowing the team to participate in the company’s success while fostering a shared vision for the business.

Our agency culture is distinctive because:

We are an independent agency that cares. We hire senior people who want work-life balance, and we strive for a sense of purpose in what we do and how we do it.

Our CEO has visibility across all the agency’s work, allowing him to effectively manage and support the team.

When stress levels are high, our CEO will proactively work to pull them down, even if this means letting go of clients who are draining hours and energy.

We are not an agency that encourages long hours and are committed to achieving a good work/life balance.
If staff members do put in extra time, we always provide time in lieu.
We encourage holidays because they’re important for managing team members’ stress.
In July 2023 we launched a new team global cooking program, encouraging our team to get creative with cookery. This captures the true essence of our team’s make-up: that we are connected, even when geographically apart.
We ensure employees feel valued and give them the TLC they deserve. We hold regular team lunches, organise fancy meal delivery boxes, have presented surprise vouchers and hired a boat to enjoy Sydney Harbour.

As a small agency, we have a flexible and organic approach to staff development. By getting to know our team
members’ ambitions, we provide training and progression which best suits their goals.

For example:

When our General Manager wanted to undertake a mini-MBA course, we offered to support her through it.
Our Head of Client Services was interested in creative strategy, so we transitioned her into a new role to explore this.
We offer IMAA Media Academy training for all staff, regardless of their existing role, to allow our people to advance into other areas of the business.
We launched an initiative on Awaken Brands whereby anyone at Awaken can allocate 10% of their time to work on new areas of business, distribution, packaging, and finance – an opportunity to expand their skill set into a B2C company.
We regard clients as our partners and catch up with them at least monthly. We even recently invited them to a 4-week digital marketing course.

COMMERCIAL SUCCESS

Since establishing Awaken eight years ago, our entrepreneurial team has achieved rapid growth. Over the past four years, Awaken achieved exceptional 100% year-on-year growth in revenue and over 252% year-on-year profit growth. These impressive results have earned Awaken a well-deserved spot on the AFR’s Fast 100 list for three consecutive years, ranking at number 27 in the most recent listing. Under CEO Chris Parker’s inspirational leadership, Awaken has diversified its services, expanded into creative, acquired Agnus Creative, and in September will launch Awaken Brands, an e-commerce business that will act as a retail
distributor to clients.

Our commercial success is driven by our smart business principles and how we treat our clients and staff. Awaken was founded by our CEO Chris Parker as a kitchen table start up. From the beginning, Chris wanted Awaken to act as more than just a service provider, but as a partner. Acting as an extension of our clients’ teams, we have always worked hard to help them be successful. This ethos has undoubtedly fuelled our own commercial success.

This year we have had brilliant success across our projects and campaigns, with the company achieving 73% YoY revenue growth. Our clients come from a broad range of industry sectors, including alcohol, electronic, hospitality and government. We have had a number of new clients join, including Chery Motors and The Kids’ Cancer Project.

Our core clients continue to have excellent growth with Awaken and we have an excellent client retention rate: In fact, most have been with us for more than four years.

This year has seen Awaken secure many big commercial and agency wins,

including:

Acquiring Agnes Media, building our performance media credentials in Australia and the US and UK markets.
Growing into one of the most awarded independent agencies, with recent accolades including a 2023 Webby award nomination for Best Growth Strategy, three-time winner of the Australian Financial Review lists, B&T Awards 2022 Finalist for Best Media campaign (the only Australian independent agency to be nominated), and Business News Australia;s Australian Young Entrepreneur 2022 for Marketing.
Continuing successful management of Panasonic’s creative and media across all aspects of their business.
Becoming the full service agency for one of our biggest clients, Proximo.
Our successful managing of the media account for Kraken and Jose Cuervo brands has now expanded to include the creative and media accounts for their RTD portfolio, whiskeys and bourbons.
Our work for Visit Newcastle has marked our first expansion into government agencies – a vital step in growing our portfolio across more government areas.
Winning The Kids Cancer Project and relaunching their The Better Challenge.
Being named as a finalist for Mediaweek’s ‘Next of the Best’ Awards in 2023. And winning Silver for the acclaimed “Marketing – Agency” category.
Gaining Chery Motors as a client, helping them launch into the Australian market, and achieving over 1,000 sales of their OMODA 5 Model.

IMPACT & MOMENTUM

Our commitment to genuinely collaborative client partnerships and innovative bespoke solutions means that we are uniquely positioned to adapt to change. Such close relationships allow us to truly understand our clients’ businesses, and our team are great at thinking on their feet. The result is unique solutions, harnessing latest research, accurate data and outstanding creativity.

Over the last year, we’ve adapted to the changing market by becoming even more focused on digital and attention metrics and media. We’re heavily attuned to moving the industry forward to a human attention metric. This means brands can accurately gauge how much people care about the brand and ad, rather than relying on standard computer metrics such as impressions. We actively push our media partners to report on attention-style metrics, helping evolve the industry to leverage more modern measurement methodologies.

We have also actively moved the market away from linear consumption (e.g. TV and broadcast radio) towards streaming services and platforms, investing in podcasts and Spotify.

The way we distribute our clients’ budgets has also changed, reflecting their confidence in using a variety of platforms and subscription services. We now target numerous home devices, throughout the workday and over the weekend, not just a single device in each location. This is reflected in our plans, which tend to have many more vendors and suppliers on smaller budget lines.

We have also moved the industry forward by being actively involved in the IMAA. Our General Manager participates in a working group looking to make group deals across accounting software to help standardise software and reporting tools within the industry. We lead by example, fast-tracking ourselves in the IMAA’s program by transitioning Awaken to Accountability software to benefit the industry and for our own commercial success.

We also move the industry forward in our approach to casting. Equal representation in the media is very important to us and we always ensure we have a strong gender split. We take great care to show diverse backgrounds, body shapes and features.

Our vision involves strengthening our client partnerships to help them grow their business in new ways. By Q4, Awaken will launch our direct-to-consumer ecommerce business, Awaken Brands, for our clients. Awaken will act as distributors, purchasing stock and using our clever packaging strategies to build direct-to-consumer brands.

Awaken Brands will offer our clients instant NPS insights into their products while building 1:1 customer relationships. Our first prototypes for Awaken Brands have been built and are in final production for launch.

By 2026, we will further expand our positive impact to our client partnerships, offering services across the full product lifecycle and sales lifecycle. These will include the development and launch of new products, through to running loyalty programs on an ongoing basis. In this way, clients will partner with us from the very beginning – working together to bring products to market and building customer loyalty

THANK YOU