The seventh annual Digital Cinema Media Awards, held in partnership with Campaign, took place September 20 at BAFTA. Leading figures from the media and advertising worlds came together to celebrate and reward the most impactful cinema advertising work of the past twelve months.
The big winner on the night was Kia, Havas Media Network and Havas Play’s Kia Driving to the Electric Future with Independent Cinema campaign.
Kia’s new global brand positioning of ‘Movement that Inspires’ embodied everything it wanted to be known for: a progressive leader that champions technology, sustainability, electrification, and mobility. With this new brand positioning, Kia needed to engage a new affluent, discerning target audience of ‘modern progressives’, and fully embraced all aspects of independent cinema to achieve this.
Kia integrated with independent cinema in a way that hadn’t been done before, including owning the Gold Spot across DCM’s independent estate, in-foyer activations, outdoor cinema, and becoming the official sponsor of the Picturehouse Cinema’s The Love of Cinema podcast. Cinema became embedded across owned and earned experiences throughout Kia’s marketing and all the way through to Kia dealerships.
The campaign won the award for Best Use of Cinema (Large), as well as the overall Grand Prix prize.
The Digital Cinema Media Awards celebrate and reward the best cinema advertising and prizes were handed out in six categories this year, with one overall Grand Prix prize.
The Awards last took a short break due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but returned in 2022, celebrating cinema’s incredible comeback. This year’s Awards celebrate another brilliant year for cinema, with box office records being broken, premium formats setting new benchmarks, and arguably the biggest cultural event of the year, the phenomenon known as Barbenheimer.
With a high number of entries from a broad mix of brands and agencies, this year’s nominees raised the bar for what can be achieved using cinema advertising, thinking outside the box to utilize all aspects of the cinema experience, as well as the medium’s immersive and high-attention environment.
Digital Cinema Media CEO Karen Stacey said, “This year’s DCM Awards really feel like something special. The winning campaigns have set high standards of how brands can embrace cinema beyond just the ad reel. The work was filled with emotion, tapped into compelling insights, and used bespoke activations that cinemagoers may not have previously experienced. Creativity and smart media planning were stand-out themes of the night, and I’m looking forwards to seeing future cinema advertising campaigns inspired by the winners’ unique use of the entire cinema experience.”
Other wins on the night included Greggs and Carat UK, who’s smart Proving both the long & short of it campaign used cinema insights to targe 16-34-year-olds who visit the cinema in groups at night.
They used a captivating cinema-friendly creative which showcased Greggs’ extended store hours and encouraged the audience to indulge in their treats after enjoying a great movie. Robust measurements that isolated the impact of the cinema medium’s performance rounded out an excellent entry, winning the award for Best Use of Cinema (Small).
The winner of Best Use of Creativity in Cinema was JD Sports and Smart Media, with their campaign JD – King of the Game. JD Sports jumped whole-heartedly into cinema as a new spender in the category and truly made it count. Leading with cinema, JD used bespoke opening and closing idents, experiential cinema foyer activations, and the culturally relevant Black Panther: Wakanda Forever to target their 16-24-year-old audience in the lead up to Christmas.
The Prince’s Trust and mSix&Partners were awarded Best Marketing for Good Campaign for a creative that used the cinema medium as a conversation starter for audiences viewing it amongst others. The creative of someone standing at a lectern addressing the audience fitted very well with the cinema environment, allowing the audience a greater understanding of and personal connection to The Prince’s Trust’s cause, with compelling results that demonstrated adding cinema to the mix would deliver incremental reach of four percent.
The award for Best Long-term Use of Cinema was presented to Ikea and iProspect. Ikea and iProspect have utilized the power of cinema for over a decade, creatively switching up their campaigns and messaging. Their Ikea use end frames across cinema to drive footfall delivering great results’ entry used regional end frames to increase footfall to local stores, driving increased ROI and uplifts across key brand metrics.
In the category of Cinema Champion of the Year, we celebrated both an individual and a team who have gone above and beyond to champion smart-planning for cinema and utilize the full extent of opportunities that the medium presents for brands to deliver results for clients.
Sophie Martin, associate director, partnerships at Initiative was the individual Cinema Champion of the Year. Her entry clearly stood out to the judges, demonstrating evidence of smart planning, producing creative solutions for advertisers, driving business results for clients, and bringing new clients to cinema.
The Samsung AV Team at Starcom received the team award for Cinema Champion of the Year. In the last year alone, the team has grown Samsung’s presence across the big screen, throughout their extensive product range. In particular, the development and execution of three key partnerships that utilized the unique opportunities offered by the cinema medium stood out, delivering significant results for the brand.
For a complete list of the winners please visit the Digital Cinema Media website https://www.dcm.co.uk/awards.