Awards never seem to be out of season. This month it’s the AdNews Agency of the Year Awards. Only 10 days ago it was the Australian Dairy Awards. And it turns out I just missed the Product of the Year Awards.
I’d left the cave that I claim as a home to stock up on the only cheese I know of that celebrates the patch of ground outside the Kremlin, Red Square, and a giant pot of the dairy Grand Champion - as picked by a bunch of bearded cheese nerds and food types - Gundowring’s Licorice ice cream.
Then the Coles tannoy draws my attention to the Coles Finest Madagascan Vanilla Ice Cream, winner of the 2010 Product of the Year in the desserts category. I bought, I tried, I liked.
I was surprised as I’m the sort of food wanker who won’t get out of bed unless prodded by the proverbial pitch fork of an artisanal producer. And this was a mass produced product.
It was a brilliant call to action on Coles’ part, affecting somebody who previously couldn’t be dragged to the supermarket by all the celebrity chef and MasterChef survivor advertising in Australia.
Awards are a funny thing and the advertising world in its insecurity is obsessed by a menagerie of golden gongs - which inevitably are placed in the loo just to emphasise “creativity”.
It’s a fact of life that gongs shift product. It’s a dynamic of the wine industry often lamented by the wine makers that outside the wine geek set, gold rosettes on bottles shift product. And I, a food geek who claims to know ice cream and dairy, was sucked in.
It just shows the power of third party endorsement.
AdNews Agency of the Year Awards
12 February 2010