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For the first time in history a Kiwi advertising agency, Colenso BBDO in conjunction with Proximity New Zealand, has fought off strong international competition more than ten times its size, to be named the world's number one advertising agency in The Big Won Report. It's the first time a New Zealand or Australian agency has won the title, and betters the previous top performance, which was fifth place by the same agency last year. The performance comes off the back of an award-winning year for the College Hill pairing of Colenso BBDO and Proximity New Zealand, winning metal at the Cannes Festival of Creativity, the New Zealand Effies, The Caples, Spikes Asia and the Axis Awards, as well as winning the Diamond Echo Award and being named Campaign Asia Australia/New Zealand Agency of the Year and YoungGuns International Agency of the Year.

"We are thrilled to be part of such a historic win for New Zealand, and the performance highlights what can be achieved in an agency with a truly integrated approach," says Maggie Christie, Colenso BBDO's Director of Integration.

"Colenso and Proximity are now effectively one in the same. As more of our clients see the benefits of effective integrated marketing campaigns, the lines between traditional marketing disciplines will continue to disappear."

The Big Won is an annual global report tracking award performance of marketing communications agencies across all media categories and disciplines throughout the year. The rankings analyse the results of 39 industry awards shows, approximately 4,500 campaigns or pieces of creative by more than 1,500 agencies from around the globe to give a conclusive ranking.

"When you look at the most awarded marketing campaigns over the past few years, many of them have gone further than just advertising. We no longer view ourselves as just supplying advertising, but as creative service providers using a range of channels to solve core business problems," says Nick Worthington, Colenso BBDO creative chair.

Some of the award-winning work to come out of 100 College Hill includes building a pinball-esque skatepark to promote new flavours of Mountain Dew, a website that used facial recognition technology to help people find a look-a-like dog - their "Doggelganger" – from the SPCA for the Pedigree adoption drive, as well as putting twigs inside Monteith's cider boxes to remind people that it was the only cider on the market made from real apples and not concentrate.

"Colenso BBDO and Proximity New Zealand have worked together to become is one of the most consistently performing agencies in the world. Part of their success comes down to their ability to evolve and adapt to new channels, and deliver award-winning work across a vast number of clients and categories," says Clemenger Group New Zealand chief executive, Jim Moser.

The team at 100 College Hill were also named the world's best direct marketing agency for the second year in a row, and BBDO held onto its number one ranking for global advertising networks. Read less

Proximity and OMD Wellington have created an innovative new youth speeding campaign for the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA).

Launched as any video game would be - with tease posts on local gaming blogs, a video trailer, the release of the soundtrack from the game, giveaways, Facebook advertising – ‘Flash Drive’ is a thrilling racing game set to a pounding dub-step sound track.

But just as a player feels like they are mastering their car, they are confronted with an unexpected and highly personal twist.

If you haven’t already, play it here: www.flashdrivinggame.com

Proximity Digital Planner, Thomas Scovell, says, "We asked ourselves, could a personal death experience change the way youth think about their speeding? It was then a case of working out how best to achieve that."

Emily Goulden, Account Manager from OMD comments; "We took cues from products youth were actually interested in hearing about and planned accordingly. Utilising a peer-influencer strategy we sought to get buzz for the game using the soundtrack and teaser footage - seeded through gaming channels and offline via music influencers at events. So that when we started paid media youth would recognise it as something worth paying attention to."

Proximity chose digital interactive agency Resn to produce the game knowing that the experience had to be extremely credible and fun. Award winning composer and Sound Designer Jeramiah Ross AKA Module was chosen to collaborate with Resn on the soundtrack for the game, creating an energetic modern dubstep track to go along with the realistic racing and car sounds. The song has won accolades as a tune in its own rights, with players demanding to know what it is and how to get hold of it.

NZTA's Rachel Prince comments on the campaign, "Creating this dynamic racing game is a way for us to reach our younger audience with a pretty hard-hitting message about the issue of speed in a completely unexpected and surprising way. We know they're not always keen to hear what we have to say, but using a medium that they can relate to is a way in. We're really happy with the end result." Read less

We're excited to announce that we have Greg Forsyth, ex-Tribal DDB managing director, joining us in the new role of digital business director.

The agency and Forsyth are already well acquainted – he has been working with the agency over the past six months and was Aim Proximity's digital services director from 2001 to 2005.

"We are over the moon with Greg coming back on board and adding further weight to our already strong digital team," says Nick Garrett, Colenso BBDO managing director.

"Interactive thinking is at the heart of all our best work and being able to add more value strategically in the comms and business space for our client partners will make a big difference and Greg is the right man to drive this."

Forsyth has been in the advertising industry for more than 20 years and has worked for brands such as Air NZ, BNZ, Telecom, Fonterra, Frucor and Sky Television.

He will be tasked with building our digital strategy team and developing new long-term structures around our digital creative work. Read less

We're delighted to have Maggie Christie appointed to the role of ‘Director of Integration' at Colenso BBDO/Proximity. Her main responsibility is ensuring that we continue to provide the highest level of integrated communications for our clients.

Maggie is also responsible for managing and building our direct marketing (direct, CRM, data) resources including overall responsibility for Aim Proximity only clients.

Maggie brings a wealth of experience to her new role. She has worked on both the client and agency side of the business in Europe, North America and New Zealand.

Her experience spans financial services (Lloyds Insurance, UDC Finance), telecommunications (Telecom and Vodafone), utilities (Contact Energy), loyalty programmes (Loyalty New Zealand – Fly Buys) and many other industries (Yellow, SkyCity, etc.). There is not another direct professional in New Zealand with experience as vast and comprehensive as Maggie Christie.

Maggie began her new role at Colenso BBDO/Proximity in late-March 2012. Read less

We're over the moon to have scooped the elusive Diamond Award for our highly successful Doggelganger Pedigree adoption drive campaign, at the 2012 International ECHO Awards held in Las Vegas last night.

The Diamond Award is the highest accolade at the event and represents the best-in-show campaign across all entries.

The award-winning campaign matched homeless dogs with new owners using human and canine pairing software via a web application, analysing the user's facial features and matching the person to a canine equivalent.

The ECHO Diamond Award is the fourteenth international honour for the Doggelganger campaign following a string of awards in 2011, including Grand Prix, Gold and Bronze at the Spike Awards, Gold and Silver at the Digital Media Awards, Gold and two Silvers at Caples, as well as picking up awards at Cannes, The Work, AWARD, and RSVP and Nexus. Read less