Siren Awards Salute “Cold Campaign”

Round 2 of Australia’s 2022 Siren Awards for excellence and creativity in commercial radio advertising should send a shiver up your spine. Wunderman Thompson, Perth, emerged the winners for a powerful radio ad: “The Cold Campaign,” which aims to raise donations for the Anglicare WA, Winter Appeal. 

“The Cold Campaign” was the overall, single and the craft category winner of Round 2.

Created by Matt Wilson and Luke Williams, the ad highlights the plight of the homeless sleeping rough in winter via the concept of ‘temperature contagion’, an involuntary response that cools the body temperature, helping humans empathise with others who are freezing.

“When you find a new way to use radio which makes people have a physical reaction (whether they know it or not), you run with it,” Matt Wilson said. “The fact this spot cools a listener’s body temperature by up to 1-degree is really unique.”

The craft category win for “The Cold Campaign” went to sound engineer Brad Habib from Soundbyte Studios.

Joan Warner, chief executive officer of industry body Commercial Radio Australia, said: “The Cold Campaign demonstrates how radio advertising can create a unique and compelling call-to-action for the charity sector and bring awareness to important social issues such as homelessness.”  

You can cast your eye over the “The Cold Campaign” spot copy here.

Other winners and commendations

Independent agency, SDWM, was the campaign category winner – Sebastian Covino and James Orr received recognition for the Transport Accident Commission, with the “Country Racing Victoria” campaign targeting drink drivers. They were also highly commended in the single category.  

Two more ads were highly commended in the single ad category. Rare creatives Simon Mullins and Rob Mead were recognised for “The power of words” for the Breast Cancer Research Centre, WA.

Andrew Millar from Black Sheep Advertising was highly commended for “Selfish Prick,” an ad for the South Australia Police.

Three campaigns were highly commended in the campaign category: Magnus Newman from Nova Entertainment’s Create, for “In the Wild” for The Wild Fig brand, Sarah Mould and Nick Williams from The Core Agency with “Don’t worry about it. Doctors on Demand it,” for Doctors on Demand and from Nova Entertainment’s CREATE, Nathan Russell and Ben Clayton for the ads, “Brian the Neighbour,” “Hey Alexa” and “Hello – Goodbye” for the brand Franklyn.

Three ads were highly commended in the craft category: MDS Audio sound engineer Tim Count for the ad “Bingle Jingle” for the Accident Claims Lawyers, Astbury Studio, sound engineer Justin Astbury for “Thai Food” for the RAA and Recordworks Studio, sound engineer Jason Millhouse, for “Sandwich Love” for Subway.  

Winning entries from each round are entered into the 2022 Gold Siren Awards, with the winner announced in May 2022. Round 3 is now closed; entries for Round 4 close on Nov. 6, 2021.

You can listen to the 2022 Siren Awards Round winning ads here, and find the Siren Awards on Facebook