International advertising award season is underway, with the One Show taking place in New York next week and the Cannes Lions next month. South Africa is off to a good start, having brought home 13 Pencils from 732 in total at the 55th annual D&AD Awards, which ranked us in 13th country spot.

All the SA Pencil winners: D&AD 2017

28 Apr 2017

Here, he talks us through this year’s wins for the agency, their previous D&AD ‘pencil box’ record and their strategy to keep those international accolades coming…

Congratulations! Talk us through this year’s wins for the agency.

We won a D&AD Graphite Pencil for the Netflorist ‘War of Words’ radio campaign. We’ve all been in those situations where words just exacerbate an argument. These ads dramatise those situations, with some really layered sound design. In one execution, ‘Anniversary Forgotten’, the words ‘sleep on the couch’ delivered by a very angry wife, become a nuclear bomb! We’re proud of the result as it took a lot of hours of craft to bring the theatre of the mind to life. “A war or words is best won with flowers!”

What was your previous D&AD ‘pencil box’ record?

FCB Joburg has won a number of pencils over the years, the most recent of which was three pencils for our Coca-Cola ‘A Rainbow for the Rainbow Nation’ campaign.

Gold at end of rainbow for Coca-Cola RainbowNation

Nahana Communications Group  23 Jun 2014

Share your strategy to keep those international accolades coming.

FCB Africa’s joint-CCO, Jonathan Deeb.

These days, not only every big film production house but also every kid and his grandma are producing content. In a day, people are exposed to some really good stuff. As advertisers, we need to ensure that our storytelling is good enough to compete against all of it. Consistently pursuing powerful and simple human insights is what gives us the great material to do this.

At FCB we belive it takes more than just a creative team to create a piece of magic. The campaign team for the win mentioned above, deserve a shout out: Brett Morris, Suhana Gordhan, Thabang Manyelo, Tshepo Mosoeu, Stefan Schutte, Kabelo Lehlongwane, Sarah Rae, Vanessa Borthwick, Evelyn Bonase and Myles McDonald.

The other part of the equation is working with clients that are hungry for great work on their brands. Collectively, our constant pursuit is to create work that goes from simply being viewed to shared. Winning awards is a great affirmation of this. We have fingers crossed for One Show in NYC next week – hoping to add to our pencil collection!

Here’s hoping for much more of that great South African work to come! Click here for a reminder of all of South Africa’s 2017 D&AD Pencil winners.