Mindshare and National Australia Bank have won the Game Changer of The Year award at this year’s Annual REA Excellence awards.

Working closely with REA, Mindshare and the NAB team created and ran one of Australia’s first, and the largest, programmatic digital audio campaign to date. Utilising the innovative Digital Audio Solution built on the REA platform, Mindshare and NAB were able to run the first targeted programmatic digital audio buy for NAB’s consumer facing Personal Loan team.

Utilising REA first-party data, NAB targeted first home buyers and high intent renters across Spotify, iHeartRadio, HitNetwork & ABC, all in the one buy bringing better efficiencies and more exposure for NABs marketing dollars on digital radio.

For the first time NAB was able to run the same targeting across over four platforms at an average frequency of 4.3 compared to the previous average of 5.6 when booking on single audio platforms.

The digital audio offering has traditionally been fragmented, with media buyers tending to spend their budget within one platform to create cost efficiencies, or having to split budgets across platforms to generate incremental reach. This can mean a compromise on frequency, due to being unable to frequency cap when running in separate platforms, or compromise on unifying their targeting approach, as each platform offers different types of targeting based on different data sets.

NAB wanted to find a way to unify their audio buy so that they could target the same audiences across all platforms and ensure they could also cap the frequency to create efficiencies.

Christian Solomon, Managing Partner on NAB at Mindshare: “Everyone involved is immensely proud of the work and credit the win to breaking the mould of a typical digital audio campaign. The courage to try something new paid off. NAB wanted a better way to target audiences across audio platforms and create efficiencies. Together with REA, Mindshare was able to find an solution that was both innovative and better for the client’s business.

“With so many brands in the market competing for the attention of an already busy consumer, it’s a constant challenge to cut through. For our teams from Mindshare and NAB, it’s great to be recognised for the efforts doing things a little differently, in order to connect with audiences in new and smarter ways.”

The win capped off a stellar year for the agency, with Mindshare Australia being named Australian Media Agency of the Year at the Campaign Asia Awards, making 2018 the most successful awards year in its 20 year history.

The agency has won more than 20 awards for its work on Foxtel alone, including Platinum at Spikes Asia, a Bronze Lion for Innovation at Cannes and Golds at M&M Global, Festival of Media Asia, APAC Smarties, MMA Global and the MFA Awards. Work for NAB, Kimberly-Clark and Ford was also recognised, including the MFA Grand Prix, REA Game Changer and two Australian Effie Awards.

Highlights include creating an entirely new character for Foxtel’s prison drama Wentworth, setting up that a contraband mobile had been smuggled into the prison and giving viewers the chance to engage in foul-mouthed banter with an anonymous character through the “Wentworth Rat” chatbot on Facebook Messenger.

The agency also had a strong year for new business, picking up a number of blue-chip accounts, including Mondelez, CGU and Deliveroo; as well as integrating Neo and GroupM affiliates into Mindshare’s performance marketing offering.

Mindshare Australia & New Zealand CEO Katie Rigg-Smith says: “I’m so proud of the work that our agency has delivered for clients over the past 12 months. It’s a credit to every member of the Mindshare team and everything they have achieved in the past year. The Agency of the Year win is particularly valuable as the award is judged by clients. It focuses on the vision the company has, the results we’ve delivered for clients and our new business record. Not to mention great culture and awesome talent. The recognition from this award is a testament to the incredible year that Mindshare Australia has had, and I couldn’t be prouder to finish 2018 with such a great accolade for our people and head into 2019 with such positive momentum.”