Lifesaving ad wins Round 1 of Siren Awards

Melbourne creative agency Town Square has won Round 1 of the 2023 Siren Awards for its compelling “Know First Aid – Warehouse” radio ad for St John Ambulance Victoria. The Siren Awards — a CRA initiative — recognize outstanding radio advertising and are judged by industry experts across five rounds throughout each year.

The ad, by creatives Brendan Day and Benny Moore, imagines the scene of a frantic warehouse worker, without first aid skills, discovering an injured colleague. The Sirens Council selected the 30-second ad as the best single ad and overall winner of the round. Studio engineer Stephen Renfree from Bang Bang Studios also won the craft category for the ad.  

“When something happens, first aid is the difference between knowing what to do next or not,” Day and Moore said.

“The ad comes in late. Instead of establishing a scenario or wasting time with what happened to the victim, we open with the responder screaming at the top of his lungs for help. And by under writing the script, we get to sit with his emotion and feel his hopelessness over the next 25 seconds. We let the audience’s imagination do the rest.”

The ad is now in the running for the 2023 Gold Siren Award for best radio ad, with the major prize a trip for the winners and their client to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Congratulating Town Square, Commercial Radio Australia chief executive officer Ford Ennals said:

, “The winning ad brings a hard-hitting message to radio audiences on how important it is to be able to save a life in an emergency. Town Square’s ad is an outstanding example of radio as an effective medium for creative storytelling, which is what the Siren Awards are all about. The benchmark is already high in Round 1. I’m looking forward to hearing many more high-caliber ads, and encourage all agencies to enter.”

You can listen to the winning ad here.