Nailed it! Save the 100 wins Campaign of the Year

On October 3rd, I attended the 2019 Signature Awards as part Manitoba Public Insurance’s (MPI) creative team. This year, we received seven nominations in five award categories. Our Keep your keys safe, We all pay and Save the 100 campaigns were all award finalists. In two categories, our campaigns were competing against each other!

If you’re unfamiliar with the Signature Awards, it’s an annual industry event that’s put on by the Advertising Association of Winnipeg. The event honours the best creative and advertising work in the city from the past year. To prevent bias, the Judges Panel consists of creative agencies from other parts of the world.

I have attended the awards night with MPI before, but this was the first year I was there to represent my own work. It was also the first year most of the team was in attendance (usually it’s just me and one other colleague!). We were also welcome to invite family, so it was all very exciting!

My entourage – Mom, Dad and Jordan

As the awards came to a close, we found ourselves walking away with an armful of hardware. We snagged four awards (or five if you count my dad winning a door prize) and this was the closest I’ll ever get to feeling like Taylor Swift.

Save the 100 won Broadcast over $20,000 (Single or Series).

Me and my fellow advertising specialist, Cara Lytwyn

Then Save the 100 won again for Design Miscellaneous.

And then again for Judges Choice.

And then again for CAMPAIGN OF THE YEAR (at which point, I nearly fell out of my chair)!!

MPI’s Creative Department after cleaning up!

While I felt like an underdog at this event (competing against the biggest ad agencies in the city!!!), we had a small inkling that Save the 100 was going to walk away with something. Earlier in the year, we learned that after evaluating campaigns across Canada, the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators (CCMTA) had selected us to receive the Road Safety Award for our work with Save the 100. The campaign had been well-received – but among the advertising industry to this extent? Wow. It had definitely exceeded my expectations.

There were many people involved who worked so hard to create Save the 100 and make an impact. We owe big props to our friends at FRANK Digital and DACAPO Productions Inc. and to the Advertising Association of Winnipeg for hosting such an enjoyable evening. As a concept developer and writer for this campaign (and in the entirety of my career, honestly!), I have never felt more proud of work I’ve done or validated in my abilities.

What a night!

How to write for the web

On April Fools’ Day in 2014, a US media organization called NPR wrote an article and posted it to their Facebook page. “Why doesn’t anyone read anymore?” asked the headline. People were quick to flood the comments with personal anecdotes. That’s ridiculous, they said. I read all the time! Well, in a fun twist, they inadvertently proved they didn’t. If they had clicked the link to read the full article, they would have been taken to this short paragraph:

“We sometimes get the sense that some people are commenting on NPR stories that they haven’t actually read. If you are reading this, please like this post and do not comment on it. Then let’s see what people have to say about this ‘story.’”

Not only was this a clever gag, but it was a pretty cool social (media) experiment. Aside from what I consider to be a strange paradox of people using their own personal experience to make themselves the expert on a subject they haven’t even read about (BUT I DIGRESS), this is ironically a pretty good example of how people use the Internet (spoiler alert: they’re not reading. They’re scanning.).

Most internet users visit the average website for less than 15 seconds. We spend more of our time trying to understand a page’s navigation features. And the more copy there is, the less people read.

Ease of navigation and functionality is key. When you’re thinking about your copy, consider what your audience is looking for and your key messages. And then, treat your web visitors like wild animals. Wild animals hate reading!

I have five golden rules I follow when writing for web.

1) Know the audience.

2) Only include what’s important.

3) Keep it simple with short sentences and familiar words.

4) Make specific information easy to find.

5) Get to the point quickly.

You have less than 15 seconds to help a potential client find what they’re looking for on your website. If your website is copy heavy, it sounds like you need to slay it down.