Clark Creative, Coastal Marketing Group & Spyhop Productions Team Up To Take ADDY Award’s Best of Show

February 23rd, 2010

And the Winner Is…

o o o o o o o { drum roll } o o o o o o o

We’re pleased to share the news of our recent wins at the 2010 ADDY awards! A big thank you to our clients that allow us the opportunity to not only work on their projects, but to add creativity, thought and process behind them. While we only entered 5 this year, we’re happy with the results - four awards!

Toombs County Development Authority

Silver ADDY - website
Bronze ADDY - sales packaging collateral material

CREDITS

Clark Creative - Design
Tim Johnson - Photography
Karl Stauch / Coastal Marketing Group - Copy
eMarketSouth - Web Development
Rapid Press - Printing

Savannah Development and Renewal Authority

Gold ADDY - cross platform campaign
Best of Show ADDY

The Official Release for the Best of Show award for “My Savannah Is” campaign:
Savannah, Ga. – The Savannah Chapter of the American Advertising Federation (AAF) awarded its “Best of Show” highest honor to the team of Coastal Marketing Group, Clark Creative and Spyhop Productions last night at its 2010 ADDY awards dinner. The award recognized the exceptional work the team produced for the Savannah Development and Renewal Authority’s (SDRA) television and print ad campaign launched in August 2009. The ADDY Awards held every year in February recognizes the top creative work in advertising, design, packaging, web/interactive and related fields.

The campaign entitled “My Savannah Is…” was developed for the SDRA by the creative team of Karl Strauch at Coastal Marketing Group and Cari Clark from Clark Creative Design. The creative team selected Spyhop Productions’ veteran director Jim Carswell and producer Mari Carswell, to lead the broadcast production, working with cinematographer, Mehmet Caglayan. Motion-graphics were created by Andrew Davies with Paragon Design Group and still photography was produced by Kevin Banker of Banker Optical Media.

In all, the team of Coastal Marketing Group and Clark Creative were awarded four awards. Spyhop Productions also won a Silver award for Cinematography for the campaign.

“As you can see, it was truly a collaborative effort and a lot of fun” said Clark (Art Director), who along with Strauch (Writer) served as Co-Creative Directors for the entire SDRA campaign effort.

“It’s a good feeling” added Strauch, who also penned the new Downtown Savannah tag line It Never Gets Old. “This is a creative community and there was a ton of good work out there. We did not enter as much volume as we saw from others but we won the whole enchilada for a 5th award at the end of the night - and it was the best recognition of all.”

The award caps off a recent run of brand development & creative assignments that the team of Coastal Marketing Group and Clark Creative has collaborated on in recent months – and economic development appears to be a niche. Both Strauch and Clark have worked together on assignments for various municipal chambers, economic development bodies and tourism clients not just in Georgia but the southeast region including South Carolina and Florida.

However, on this night, it was all about Savannah and pure teamwork. The SDRA bought into the vision, the approach and contributed greatly to the creative team’s success and the creative team itself spent months in focus groups, research and planning even before concepts were generated. Early in the process, Strauch had also sought out Spyhop Productions, knowing its reputation for quality work. Ultimately, Spyhop was selected to execute the broadcast effort adding tremendously to the final product.

“Jim doesn’t just hang lights and roll the cameras out” said Strauch, “he and Mari spend a lot of time dissecting the concept and improving upon it. That’s what we were looking for in a collaboration”.

“I think one of the reason’s this campaign worked is because the team focused on connecting emotionally with the viewer” said Jim Carswell. “The day and age of “selling” is gone. Today’s marketing needs to resonate with and engage those we are trying to reach.”

As Gold and “Best of Show” award winner, now the team moves on to see how it fares regionally in AAF competition.

“Maybe we have a good shot at winning that too” mused Clark. “After all, the brand is Downtown Savannah and shows most beautiful place in the world. Who wouldn’t love that?”

The Process:

Check out behind the scenes shots of the photo and video shoots. This concept sketch (below), drawn by SCAD graduate Vincent Zawada, is one of many we presented in the process of pitching our ideas to SDRA. We envisioned showing a coffee house scene at Gallery Espresso. In the end, it made much more sense to show the exterior of the business, showcasing it’s beautiful location next to one of Savannah’s beautiful historic squares.

More about the ADDY’s…
“The ADDY’s is the advertising industry’s largest and most representative competition, recognizing and rewarding creative excellence in the art of advertising.

All across the country, local entrants are vying for recognition as the very best in their markets. Local winners then compete against other winners within their regions in one of 15 District competitions. District winners are then forwarded to the National ADDY Awards competition. Entry in the Savannah Advertising Federation ADDY’s competition is the first step toward winning a National ADDY’s.

The competition begins with a call for entries in late December. Then selection of the most creative entry in each category is effected by a scoring process in which a panel of judges evaluate all creative dimensions of every entry. In each category, a Gold ADDY is recognition of the highest level of creative excellence and is judged to be superior to all other entries in the competition. Entries that are also considered outstanding and worthy of recognition receive a Silver ADDY. The number of awards given in each category is determined by the judges, based on their opinions of the quality of work in that category.” SOURCE

Entry Filed under: Advertising, CreativeWorks, Production, savannah