Saatchi & Saatchi Australia has taken out taken top honours in the WARC Innovation Awards by winning both the Grand Prix and the Product Innovation Special Award for Toyota Land Cruiser.
McCann Australia’s Free Puppies Forever for Vision Australia, won Gold plus the Special Award for Non-for-Profit.
Saatchi’s Emergency Network campaign for Toyota brought emergency communications to the 5.3 million square kilometres of Australia’s landmass that currently receives no mobile signal, by installing signal-providing devices in its LandCruiser models.
S&S: Toyota LandCruiser reaches the parts of Australia mobile phones can’t
WARC Innovation judge, Hugo Pinto, innovation services leader EMEA at IBM Interactive Experience, noted, “There is nothing like this particular car to get you through rough terrain. Toyota is leveraging an asset here, creating a crowdsourced emergency network, where every Toyota LandCruiser owner can sign up to do their fair share and give back to their communities. This shows people that they can have a much bigger impact because they own a specific vehicle. It blurs the boundaries between personal and professional. This will be the next stage of sharing economy.”
As well as Saatchi & Saatchi’s two awards, the 25-strong judging panel of client- and agency-side experts, chaired by Dana Anderson, senior vie president and chief marketing officer for Mondelēz International and soon to be chief marketing officer of MediaLink, awarded six Golds, four Silvers, three Bronzes and four more Special Awards recognising specific areas of excellence.
The winners are:
Grand Prix + Special Award for Product Innovation
- Saatchi & Saatchi, Australia, Toyota, LandCruiser Emergency Network (L.E.N.)
Gold
- McCann, Australia, Vision Australia, Free Puppies Forever + Special Award for Non-for-Profit
- Kindred, UK, Penguin Random House, Tim Weaver’s MISSING + Special Award for Channel Innovation
- J. Walter Thompson Beirut, Lebanon, Bou Khalil Supermarché, The Good Note
- AMV BBDO / Blue 449, UK, Currys PC World, Drop A Hint + Special Award for Co-Created Content
- DigitasLBi, USA, Whirlpool, Care Counts
- AMV BBDO, UK, Bodyform, No Blood Should Hold Us Back + Special Award for Category Innovation
Silver
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- Formitas BBDO, Slovenia, Spar Interspar, Start It Up Slovenia
- BBDO Bangkok, Thailand, Helpmet – Thai Health Promotion Foundation, Injury Detecting Helmet
- FP7/DXB (a part of McCann Worldgroup), UAE, NHI-Daman, Giving People Vitamin D
- FP7/CAI, Egypt, Baheya Cancer Hospital, The Sweet Donation
Bronze
- FP7/DXB (a part of McCann Worldgroup) / MediaVest Spark , UAE, Emirates NBD, The A/C Vests
- Livity, UK, Dyson, Rethinking Recruitment
- FP7/DXB (a part of McCann Worldgroup), UAE, MasterCard, A Priceless Delivery
The winners of the WARC Innovation 2017 Grand Prix and Special Awards share a $10,000 prize fund.






