An ad campaign about building a restaurant in a tree northof Auckland has won a Webby, the internet equivalent of an Oscar.
The Yellow Tree House campaign for Yellow (formerly YellowPages) took out the Telecommunications section of the Webbys, which were announcedovernight in the US.
The campaign was devised by AIM Proximity and Colenso BBDO. Applicationswere sought from amateur entrepreneurs to meet the challenge of building arestaurant 10 metres up a tree in a redwood forest near Warkworth. They had todo this using only the expertise available through Yellow. The winner was “anaccordion player” named Tracey.
The onion-shaped structure was completed in 66 days,employing more than 60 businesses. Progress was posted on a website featuring ablog, video webisodes, pictures and a webcam.
The site attracted more than 221,000 visitors and storiesabout the project were posted on more than 10,000 other websites.
More than2000 people dined at the treetop restaurant during the month it was open – justhalf the number of people who actually booked. The project also gainedworldwide media attention.
“We’re absolutely thrilled,” said Kellie Nathan, Yellow’sMarketing Director, about the Webby. “It’s completed a full year of awards forthe Tree House campaign and I think in particular the Webby Award focuses onthe website.
“We had a lot of blog comments and a lot of engagement bypeople across the country and internationally who were following that campaign,and so I think the website design was a key element in why we won.
“We got a lot of local visitors, but we also got aninternational audience, which I think was due to the uniqueness of the idea. Itwas quite a whacky challenge, and I think the beautiful design of therestaurant, the onion shape, drew a lot of international visitors to the sitefrom an architectural and design point of view.”
For AIM Proximity and Colenso BBDO, the Webby adds to astring of awards collected by the Yellow Tree House Campaign in the past year,including Cannes Lions, the Effies, and the Asia Pacific Digital Media Awards. AdamGood, CEO of AIM Proximity, says they are “stoked” about the award.
“There’s no doubt from Colenso’s and AIM’s point of viewthat it’s a campaign we’ve really been proud of; what we believe is a bit of agame-changing idea,” he said. “Fundamentally these sorts of campaigns can’twork without using digital channels. They build over a period of time; peopletalk about someone building a restaurant in a tree – digital amplifies thoseconversations, people hear about it, they see content about it, they visit thelocation, they take photos of the restaurant, and the way we’ve evolvedmarketing is that if you can create an idea where people can participate alongwith the campaign, you’re in a good place because people are interested in it.People will start forming their own opinions, so suddenly this community‘trust’ starts to build and people want to know about it. That’s why we’redoing more of these sorts of campaigns.”
The owner of the land where the tree house was built is nowseeking resource consent to use it for private and corporate functions.
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