Ogilvy PR Australia Gets Gold At Top International Communications Awards

23 June 2008

It’s hi-fives down under as two of our teams from Ogilvy PR Australia are celebrating the announcement of big wins in this year’s prestigious International Association of Business Communication (IABC) Gold Quill Awards – the worldwide ‘Oscars’ of business communication (minus the red carpet, tears and tantrums). 

Our Australian team has picked up three awards in total. Two for consumer PR specialists, Pulse Communications, and one for Impact Employee Communications.

The ever-creative Pulse team had the judges pulses racing with its ‘Search for the Happy Little Vegemite’s’ campaign, which swept up the Australian media and public in a week-long quest to find the original cast of an iconic 1950’s Australian TVC.  This won the top award in its category - a Gold Quill Award of Excellence (Media Relations). The team was also awarded a Gold Quill Award of Merit (Special Events) for its ‘Wolfmother at The Chapel’ campaign, implemented for Vodafone to support Australia’s first live stream of a rock concert to mobile phones.

Our employee communication gurus at Impact also won the top award in their category - unsurprisingly, employee communication.  They received a Gold Quill Award of Excellence for their post-acquisition integration campaign, supporting nutrition, health and wellness giant, Nestlé, after it acquired iconic Australian food brand, Uncle Tobys. 

The panel of judges, which comprised two tiers of experts from the global communication industry, was particularly impressed with Impact and Pulse’s creativity, insights and outstanding results.
Our teams were up against tough competition with the IABC Gold Quill Awards attracting over 1,000 entries from over 20 countries. This awards program has been running globally for more than 35 years and annually tests the work of professional communicators from strategists to tacticians, only ever recognising the best of the best.
Says Ogilvy PR Australia’s managing director, John Studdert, “We’re completely thrilled with the wins, even better knowing we were head-to-head with an extremely high calibre of nominees from all corners of the globe.

“Impact’s campaign made a real business difference to Nestlé Australia in terms of motivating, inspiring and aligning its sales team, ultimately generating sales.  This Gold Quill really is the crème de la crème when it comes to global accolades in the growing employee comms discipline. For Pulse, the hype created by both its outstanding campaigns really captured the essence of our Pulse team does best – embedding brand values into the hearts and minds of consumers and allowing them to bond with the brand at an emotional level.“