Agency Wins Award for Campaign That Never Actually Ran
AUCKLAND – In a rousing victory for pure intention over measurable outcomes, Auckland-based agency NotionHatch has taken home gold at the 2025 C.R.E.M.A. Awards (Campaigns Remembered for Existing Mostly Abstractly) for a campaign that technically never launched.
The campaign, codenamed “Operation Unspoken Summer,” was billed internally as a “multi-platform, sensory-forward activation journey,” and included a 90-second cinematic spot, an edible poster, and a pop-up experience at the back of a Mitre 10 Mega in Warkworth. Unfortunately, due to repeated internal feedback loops and a rogue Jira ticket, the campaign never made it past the third round of pre-launch strategy re-alignment.
"This recognition reinforces our belief that if a campaign makes enough decks, that is delivery in its own right," said creative director Lauren Wicks, moments after her fourth Aperol spritz. "We had eight Slack huddles a day for this. The client sent us a cheese board once. That’s traction."
The client, whose identity remains confidential but strongly indicated by the campaign’s 38 references to garage doors, responded with a polite thumbs-up emoji in the shared Google Doc. Meanwhile, the 7-minute behind-the-scenes video has amassed 14,000 ironic views on Vimeo. One staff member, who wishes to remain anonymous, claimed this was the most engaging thing the agency had done since the 2021 internal naming brainstorm which resulted in four dogs and a ficus being unofficially titled 'brand strategists.'
NotionHatch plans to reinvest the award winnings in additional tote bags and quarterly wellness macarons.
The campaign, codenamed “Operation Unspoken Summer,” was billed internally as a “multi-platform, sensory-forward activation journey,” and included a 90-second cinematic spot, an edible poster, and a pop-up experience at the back of a Mitre 10 Mega in Warkworth. Unfortunately, due to repeated internal feedback loops and a rogue Jira ticket, the campaign never made it past the third round of pre-launch strategy re-alignment.
"This recognition reinforces our belief that if a campaign makes enough decks, that is delivery in its own right," said creative director Lauren Wicks, moments after her fourth Aperol spritz. "We had eight Slack huddles a day for this. The client sent us a cheese board once. That’s traction."
The client, whose identity remains confidential but strongly indicated by the campaign’s 38 references to garage doors, responded with a polite thumbs-up emoji in the shared Google Doc. Meanwhile, the 7-minute behind-the-scenes video has amassed 14,000 ironic views on Vimeo. One staff member, who wishes to remain anonymous, claimed this was the most engaging thing the agency had done since the 2021 internal naming brainstorm which resulted in four dogs and a ficus being unofficially titled 'brand strategists.'
NotionHatch plans to reinvest the award winnings in additional tote bags and quarterly wellness macarons.