Johannesburg-based production company CSQUARED walked away from the 2014
edition of the PromaxBDA Africa awards with more statuettes than many of its
peers. The team took the gold for Most Outstanding Design in Promotion, Best
Visual FX and Compositing and Best Use of Humour in Promotion. It picked up the
silver awards for Best Interactive Promo, Best Sports Campaign and Best Sports
Promo. It also received nominations in several other categories.
According to Chris Dobson, owner of CSQUARED, the gratification of winning these
recognitions is that much greater because the team was working with regular,
annual briefs rather than any new, big campaigns that would come with more
capacious budgets and meatier creative opportunities. “This presents a lot of
challenges because firstly, we’re not working with major budgets and secondly we
have the challenge of taking a regular campaign and making it fresh, adding
something new to it. The Promax awards are a validation for us that we managed to
do that successfully.’
There were three campaigns that took awards for CSQUARED, all of them for pay-
TV sport broadcaster SuperSport: the ABSA Currie Cup, the ATP/WTA Tour and the
Barclays Premier League. Under strict instructions from SuperSport’s creative
director David Martin to show him something he had never seen before, the
CSQUARED team innovated with concept, copy and design to create three promo
campaigns that could make viewers look differently at their favourite sporting
events.
For the Barclays Premier League launch, they had to combine two separate
concepts, originally pitched as alternatives, into a single 60-second spot. Featuring
SuperSport presenter John Dykes, the copy expounds how the English football
league has grown into a truly international phenomenon, with players from all over
the world becoming the teams’ stars and viewers across the planet shouting for the
favourite club. This was the first concept. The second part of the spot, which won it
the silver for Best Interactive Promo, featured an invitation to fans to Instagram
photographs of themselves in their team’s colours.
It was the use of humour in the ABSA Currie Cup launch that made this a
memorable campaign. It consisted of three spots, each one turning its attention to
one of the “unsung heroes’ of rugby. The ad which took the award Best Use of
Humour, was won in which a man who paints the lines on a rugby field passionately
explains the intricacies of his craft. A second in the series saw a cheerleader going
through her preparations for the next game. Collectively these ads took the silver
for Best Sports Campaign.
The biggest winner for CSQUARED was its work for the ATP/WTA tennis tour, which
won for Most Outstanding Design in Promotion, Best Visual Effects and Compositing
and Best Sports Promo. For this, the team experimented with an innovative double
exposure technique and the recognition they received for came as a particular
surprise to Dobson, especially as it came in the BDA category. “This is not
something we usually specialise in,’ he says. “We have a small effects and design
team and this award is really a feather in their cap.’
The Promax- winning spots went on air at various times last year but several of
them can still be seen on Vimeo.
