Starcom, part of Core, has won this year’s NewsBrands Ireland’s Power of Planning competition.
The winning media plan was created by Kate Deane, Sean Lyons, Varsha Ravindranath, Orna Monaghan, Rebecca Doggett, and Tara Delaney.
Over one hundred media planners from Ireland’s top media agencies took part in this year’s competition which took place over the last week. The teams were challenged to create a media plan exclusively using print and online news publisher platforms. The fictitious brief was to create a media plan for an organic, sustainable food brand that was launching a new Mexican range for summer.
Each team was asked to choose three of the following audiences to target key audiences including 16-35 year olds, 25-44 year olds; business owners/HR Professionals/Workplace as well as 55+ year olds and parents. The judging panel was made up of Lisa Buckley, communications and programmes director, NewsBrands Ireland, Aoife Hofler, media director Javelin and Christine Matthews, Kantar Media.
Starcom saw off a very strong challenge from PHD which, according to the judges, “brought some fantastic creative media innovation and were very clear in bringing their freshness theme to life, consistently throughout their response and live presentation.”
According to judge Christine Matthews, Kantar Media: “Huge congrats to Starcom for their winning entry which demonstrated thorough interpretation of the brief. They used data fuelled strategy to match audiences with news brands media vehicles, incorporated creative media innovation, big media owner partnerships to maximise budget, supported with niche contextual matching, on point with the brief. They incorporated performance metrics and iteration, to maximise budget across a well-phased three-stage strategy.”
“The standard of the presentations was really strong, and Starcom demonstrated a very clear media strategy and approach and brought it to life effectively with a broad mix of solutions,” adds Aoife Hofler.
Speaking about the competition, Lisa Buckley, NewsBrands Ireland says: “This is the ninth year of our annual competition, and we love to see the energy and enthusiasm these media professionals put into the competition. The idea behind the annual competition and Power of Planning education day is to demonstrate the reach, diversity, and effectiveness of using news brands platforms. Thank you to all the teams who took part and congratulations to Starcom and PHD for their standout plans.
As well as taking part in the competition, the 100 or so media planners had the opportunity to meet with commercial teams from Ireland’s leading national news publishers which included DMG Media, Business Post Group, News Ireland, The Irish Times, Irish Examiner, Reach Ireland, and the Irish Farmers Journal.
