The very best: Ten becomes three

This year's celebration of Aller Best is naturally quite different than usual. On March 5, the local final was held at teams, where the ten best cases were presented and voted on. The joy was just as great, and the pride just as effervescent, when the three finalists received the news of their well-deserved top positions. And there is every reason to be proud!

The ten have now become three well-deserved finalists. Head of the jury Chris Tallerås Steen explains that Aller Best is a competition for campaigns run by Aller Media.

-A competition we have now been running for five years, where we see an incredible development and progress year by year. Last year's winner "Talkmore" has received a total of seven awards through Medieprisen, Gulltaggen and Anfo Effekt.

-"I'm incredibly proud of these seven awards, we achieved two golds in the Media Award, no other finalist has ever won gold in two categories.

- We also had two of the three nominees in the "Norway's Best Media Salesperson" award.

- This year's cases are once again of a very high standard. "Many thanks to everyone who submitted! We had many good and different cases this year," says Chris Tallerås Steen, head of the jury and commercial director at Aller.

And this year's finalists are:

• Note BUGG
• Telenor T-We
• Directorate of Health

- "Congratulations to the three cases that made it to the top. They represent Aller Best in a very good way, exactly what we in the jury applaud and look for," says Chris Tallerås Steen.

- What all three cases have in common is a common thread, where the results are rock solid and not least the good collaboration between the customer, media agency, advertising agency and Aller. This is probably the recipe for success," summarizes the head of the jury.

Obs Bygg - "World champions in renovation"

Jury statement: The jury was impressed by the crazy results created in this case. Sales increased by a staggering 75 percent. The main goals of the campaign were to increase awareness of Obs Bygg's online store and build customer knowledge of the retail chain's "Price Promise". On the key parameters of knowledge of Obs Bygg's "Price Promise" and awareness of the online store, the campaign achieved a tremendous increase. Other parameters such as "Recall", "Knowledge", "Choice set" and "Preference" showed considerable increases. Traffic to the online store increased significantly, and traffic from Aller increased by as much as nine percent more than total traffic. If we look at the sales modeling, they show increased ROI for all media investments for Obs Bygg - and here, too, we see a higher percentage growth from Aller than for the total.

The good and close collaboration and the clear goals that were set between Obs Bygg, PHD and Aller Media meant that all parties steered and optimized towards the same goal, which paid off in full with sparkling results.

For the second year in a row, Obs Bygg excels in the top three list, and the team behind the project is very proud of that! Close collaboration, long-term thinking, tailoring, commitment and ownership, according to the team - from left. Thomas Johansen PHD, Gard Robert Hasselstrøm Obs Bygg and Josephine Messa Aller - is what it takes to achieve good results.

- "It's great to be at the top again this year. It's proof that the collaboration works," says Josephine Messa, Strategic Group Customer Manager at Aller Media.

She explains that they have used the entire universe in Aller, where the two most important solutions were a specially designed template for Obs Bygg and geo-management of the ads delivered through mobile. In other words, the ads were targeted at everyone living in the area around an Obs Bygg store.

- To cut a long story short: The results from the successful year 2019 were thoroughly beaten! It's really cool to see that we can contribute to good growth," says Josephine Messa.

Read more about the campaign and the solution below.

Gard Robert Hasselstrøm is Marketing Manager at Obs Bygg. He highlights the triangular collaboration with Josephine and Thomas Johansen in PHD Media as very good.

- Through our long-standing collaboration with PHD, they know what we want and what we're looking for. Partly because of its media technology solutions, Aller was identified as an exciting opportunity. Josephine and her team have demonstrated the power of Aller, not only through the solution, the surfaces and the impact measurements, but also through the ability to find solutions and the will to succeed together with us. With good perseverance and the ability to execute, results will come," says Gard Robert Hasselstrøm.

Thomas Johansen, Digital Director at PHD Media agrees with Gard Robert Hasselstrøm.

- I need to add commitment and ownership! By challenging solutions, documenting well and being passionate about what you're doing, we succeed together. So all credit to Josephine," says Thomas Johansen of PHD Media.

He also believes that Aller Best has become an increasingly important award, partly because the cases are constantly improving so that they also hold their own in external competitions.

- Then it's fun to get to the top," says Thomas Johansen.

Telenor T-We - "How we helped over 124,000 customers find their new favorite show"

The jury's reasoning: The jury was full of admiration for the smart tools and unique results! In this case, they have solved a demanding task of rebranding and branding. In the fall of 2018, Canal Digital became Telenor T-We, and the challenge was to replace a strong and well-known brand with a new one. The ambition was to establish T-We as an entertainment expert to be trusted.

The main carrier of the campaign was new "series tips" that they ran on Dagbladet's online and print channels, with contextual advertising and tactical content material segmented towards Telenor customers as supporting activities. The stories were also published on Telenor's own pages.

Through a close collaboration between Aller Media, NewsLab, OMD and Telenor, they created smart solutions that produced unprecedented results. TV viewing of the promoted titles increased by an average of 168 percent. Over 124,000 customers followed the series recommendations and found their new favorite series. The campaign and collaboration is referred to as a success story internally in Telenor.

From left. Irén Udnæs, Telenor Norway, Carl-Adam Sjölander, OMD, Martin Wenstad Janssen, Cavai, Andreas Gaarder Aller and Joakim Thorkildsen, advisor at NewsLab.

- I have to say that this is the most fun project I've ever been involved in! The project has had a fantastic flow, because it's actually been quite complicated with many things and many people involved. So I have to praise everyone. It's definitely a success factor for why this will continue into 2021," says Martin Wenstad Janssen, who recently left Aller to become commercial director at Cavai.

Last year, he won Aller Best for Talkmore together with OMD, and it is actually the winning case that inspired Telenor and OMD to enter into a closer collaboration with Aller.

- "We faced some pretty tough challenges trying to find things that weren't on the price list. We managed that to a very high degree," explains Martin Wenstad Janssen.

Carl-Adam Sjölander, digital advisor at OMD, was also part of last year's winning team. He believes the Aller Best award is important because it highlights good collaborations.

- Aller Best is an extremely cool competition. It highlights what we're doing and the genuine collaborations. It's the good processes, and the fact that we have found strength in each other and worked painlessly. And it's also the answer to what it's like to work with Aller. Aller has extremely good project management, good ideas and you work with professionally strong people who work hard. They take ownership, and they do it very easily. They deliver on what we want them to deliver on," he says.

Read more about the campaign and the solution below.

The challenge for Telenor T-We is that Telenor is traditionally associated with telephony and broadband. The TV product is not as well known in the market.

Telenor had already started working on a tip concept, but advisor Gino Ismail at OMD saw the potential for a sharper and clearer outlet. Aller became the perfect partner in this work.

- More TV is being watched than ever before, and we've never had more to choose from. Still, it can be a bit overwhelming for the customer, and many want good and relevant tips. We use our expertise in entertainment and content to make it easier for customers to find the gold among the gray matter," explains Irén Udnæs, MarCom and Content Manager at Telenor Norway.

The tips are prepared in collaboration with Telenor's regular content agency NewsLab. Not only are the click-through rates above all expectations, the reading time is also sky-high with an average of around four minutes. All tips have also had a direct effect on viewing figures, and the increase has been significant.

Joakim Thorkildsen, Advisor at NewsLab, says he is proud to be part of the team that is elevating Telenor's position in entertainment.

- It's also great that we, together with Telenor, have managed to highlight and give huge growth to many great, but perhaps less well-known series," he says.

Martin Wenstad Janssen is confident in the case and is certain that it will do well in external case competitions too! But since he is leaving Aller Media, Andreas Gaarder is taking over his job.

- Yes, I'm taking over from a very good guy and will now continue to work on this case together with very good people. The case shows the results of skilled people, each with their own expertise, who have found a good way to communicate and collaborate well. I am impressed by what they have achieved and I look forward to seeing what we can achieve in other case competitions," says the new Strategic Group Account Manager at Aller Media.

Directorate of Health - "Stopptober"

Jury statement: The jury was impressed by the results based on very good insight and close collaboration. The ambition of the Norwegian Directorate of Health's Stopptober campaign was to inspire more smokers to join a smoking cessation attempt and stay smoke-free. The case was tailored from start to finish by Mindshare, the Norwegian Directorate of Health, Per Høj and Aller. This collaboration proved to be very fruitful.

Through great insight and Aller's universe, they found Mona, Glenn, Silje and Elvis who all wanted to quit smoking. Through 28 days of ups and downs, they shared their own real stories throughout the campaign. This created a sense of intimacy in their approach to quitting smoking. The goal of all four was to quit smoking, and through the campaign they succeeded in getting these four and people to try, want or plan to quit smoking.

The personal and societal benefits of this are huge. This is work that saves lives and really matters. There is no doubt that this gave everyone involved the motivation to do their very best to succeed in this common goal.

From left. Henriette Skådinn, Mindshare, Jasmina Lie, Aller and Christian Næss Gundersen, Mindshare.

"First of all, we must promote the four people who took part in the project! The project would not have been the same without Mona, Glenn, Silje and Elvis, who we followed through 28 days towards quitting smoking," comments Jakob Linhave, Head of Department at the Norwegian Directorate of Health.

Because it's the real people who are the key to the success of the Stopptober campaign. Readers get to follow the participants through diary films where they share their ups and downs.

- The participants filmed themselves every single day. "We've never done anything like this before, so it was extra exciting! But it went beyond all expectations," says Jasmina Lie, Strategic Customer Manager at Aller.

She believes there are many unique elements in the campaign that make it one of the top three in Aller Best. The casting through Dagbladet and the close collaboration with those involved. Not least, the results and changing the behavior of the population with a fully digital campaign.

- That's very unique. We have helped four people to become smoke-free. The health and social benefits are huge," says Jasmina Lie.

The whole project initially started after the insight from the previous campaign showed that they were not getting the effect they wanted. Christian Næss Gundersen, Account Director at Mindshare, says that together with Per Høj, they used this insight as a starting point when they began looking for other solutions.

- "Aller Media presented the visual way of telling the stories already in the pitch, and we loved it. Using Aller Media's surfaces in new ways has been an important success in how the case appears," he says.

Read more about the campaign and the solution below.

Also on the team is Henriette Skådinn, Consultant and Creative Director for the campaign at Mindshare. She highlights the use of video formats familiar from social media to convey content on Aller Media's surfaces in the campaign.

- We know the story video format so well from social media, and it is exciting to use the "snack-bite" format also in longer storytelling on Aller Media's sites, and throughout the 28 days to consolidate the "reality" concept People generally have a short attention span, which has been included in the design of the content to good effect," she says.

On Monday, May 3, we'll reveal who's going to the top of "The Aller Championsteam"? so stay tuned!