Roberts Communications’ creative work took home honors at the local Awards for Achievement in Advertising (ADDY) event, sponsored by the Rochester Advertising Federation on March 12.
The Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival online experience received an ADDY in the Interactive Media: Website category. The amusing viral video leads jazz fans through a personal experience to promote the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival and encourage advance-ticket purchases with information about VIP offerings and event photo opportunities. Personalized with variable-data technology, the e-mail with the promotional animation was opened by 60 percent of recipients and it was forwarded hundreds of times.
Roberts also received a LADDY (certificate of excellence) in the Public Service: Mixed Multimedia Campaign category for its “Definitionisms” campaign created for the Greater Rochester Chapter of the American Red Cross. In an effort to build relationships with a new generation of supporters, the campaign featured a series of humorous, pretend words with definitions describing the feeling of giving, including “giftastic,” “generositarian” and “charitobolosity.” The words — and their dictionary-style definitions — were printed on coffee sleeves and distributed to local coffeehouses. In addition to educating and entertaining people about the American Red Cross, the campaign drove people to a Web site to donate and select one of four “Definitionism” T-shirts.
“We’re proud of our award-winning work this year, because the high-quality creative produced impressive results for our clients,” said Bill Murtha, president and CEO of Roberts. “While we’re pleased to have our work recognized by our peers in the advertising industry, we’re just as pleased to be part of two programs that benefit the quality of life in the Greater Rochester community.”
The ADDY awards are a global event, attracting more than 60,000 entries overall. The Rochester event generated 300 entries from agencies, companies’ in-house creative departments and nonprofit corporations. The judges were advertising executives and creative directors from six of Chicago’s top advertising firms.