Using some of the leading creative minds in the industry in an innovative integrated agency model, M&C Saatchi Abel won the first gold Loerie award for a PR Communications Campaign at the 2011 Loerie Awards held in Cape Town mid September.
Walking away with the only gold award in the PR category – introduced for this first time this year – for its ‘Fire The Chef’ campaign to relaunch the Mr Delivery brand and service offering, the accolade is a significant achievement for the agency’s young PR division.
M&C Saatchi Abel broke the mould by utilising the creative power of a team more accustomed to big budget advertising to design the brave campaign centred on firing the ‘out of shape’ Mr Delivery logo chef. The daring low budget campaign was designed to communicate how the brand was changing for the better. Incorporating traditional PR, direct marketing, social media and celebrity endorsement, the campaign struck up conversation with customers, engaged the public and contributed a significant increase in sales for the brand.
PR Managing Partner, Alison van den Heever, believes that the robust, integrated approach taken by the agency was key to the resounding success of the campaign. “This is the first time a brand has ever ‘fired’ its own logo. This itself was a very bold undertaking but, the fun creative idea contributed to the talkability – and great effectiveness – of the campaign”.
“The agency’s culture of leveraging expertise across all disciplines meant that creative, strategy and PR teams were involved upfront when conceptualising ‘Fire The Chef’. This ensured that the idea and its implementation would have genuine impact and relevance to consumers, while positively re-shaping the brand’s image,” said van Den Heever.
Executive Creative Director, 
said, “We see ourselves as a Strategic Marketing & Communications consultancy – that just happens to make ads. The way we work is different and the way we approach problems is different. Being a smaller agency we focus on the needs of the client by drawing on all the resources at our disposal, including the immense creative talent within the agency.”
“Full service communications consultancies that offer integrated PR campaigns are likely to deliver better results. Creative input is invaluable to our PR campaigns, giving us a totally different perspective of what is possible, as is evident from the work done on the Mr Delivery campaign,” adds Van den Heever.
The gold Loerie win marks a highly successful 19 months in business for M&C Saatchi Abel. Van den Heever and her team have won six retainer clients in 2011 alone, and have grown to a complement of six permanent staff members in recent months.
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