In a year of many firsts, a campaign whose client was the people of the UK and the Republic of Ireland has taken gold at the Campaign Media Week Awards. Like many industry awards this year, Campaign introduced four special categories to recognise the work of the commercial media industry in response to the coronavirus crisis.
Up against the BBC and Channel 4, #MyHeroes won gold in the Covid-19: Media Collaboration award, an exceptionally fitting title as this was a campaign owned by the entire OOH industry. We worked with Kinetic UK and Kinetic Ireland, collaborating with Media Owners across the two countries, to bring this campaign to life.
#MyHeroes ran throughout lockdown with the support of fourteen media owners. Across the UK and Ireland, these included: Adtower, Alight Media, Boomerang Media, BlowUP Media, Clear Channel UK, Clear Channel Ireland, Hi! Street Digital Media, JCDecaux, Micromedia, MJ Flood Digital, Ocean Outdoor, Open Media, Orb Screen and Wide Eye.
The purpose of the campaign was to highlight those everyday heroes in our lives. Together and overnight we changed our industry from an advertising channel into a targeted broadcast channel for good, so we could share messages of love and gratitude to the 14.5 million key workers who were out of their homes keeping us safe. We handed OOH to the public and brands; giving them control by calling for tweets, using #MyHeroes, nominating these heroes with their unique stories. These were published and we closed the social media loop with an image of the tweet on OOH replied back to the person who tweeted. The campaign was live for eight weeks on 1292 sites. #MyHeroes had a tangible effect on people’s lives; it authentically connected loved ones that couldn’t be together during an immensely difficult time.
Andrew Newman, CEO, DOOH.com “This win really was for the people that inspired the campaign. MyHeroes was a way of showing our profound appreciation for the key workers across the UK and Ireland who kept us safe during lockdown. As an industry we came together, at a time when we were unable to be in our workplaces continuing business as normal, we showed what true collaboration can achieve – connecting not only the public with their heroes, but with each other in order to send this hugely important message.”