Perth agency Rare win Round 2 of 2023 Siren Awards
Perth agency Rare has won Round 2 of the 2023 Siren Awards with the ad, ‘Reading Can Take You Anywhere’, for the Department of Education’s Premier’s Reading Challenge.
The radio ad by Jess Marshall and Simon Mullins uses surprise, taking the listener from a Hollywood movie-style soundscape to the sound of a child reading from a book to promote the reading challenge.
The Sirens Council selected ‘Reading Can Take You Anywhere’ as the best single campaign ad and overall winner of the round.
“To have this rich, immersive soundscape fade away leaving only a child’s voice in its wake creates an emotional and compelling conclusion that perfectly captures the magic of reading,” Marshall and Mullins said.
“Just like imagination, audio isn’t constrained by pixels or dimensions. This made radio the perfect medium, as it allowed us to turn simple words on a page into an immersive story.”
The ad is now in the running for the 2023 Gold Siren Award for the best radio ad, with the major prize a trip for the winners and their clients to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Studio engineer Brad Habib from Soundbyte also won the craft category for the 30-second ad.
Other versions of the ad, ‘Murder Mystery’ and ‘Alien’ also received highly commended in the single ad and craft categories.
Congratulating Rare, CRA chief executive officer, Ford Ennals, said: “Audio attention is an increasingly important metric for advertisers and one that CRA is about to conduct further research into.”
“The creative in Rare’s winning ad is an outstanding example of how to grab the listeners’ attention by introducing an unexpected element into a radio ad.”
The Siren Awards are run by CRA to recognise outstanding radio advertising and are judged by industry experts across five rounds throughout the year, plus a final call round.
Winning entries from each round are entered into the 2023 Gold Siren Awards, with the winner to be announced in May 2023.
Listen to the Round 2 winning ads here at www.sirenawards.com.au