The international broadcasting industry has acknowledged Gauteng-based Rapid Blue's achievements by awarding the production house with some of its highest accolades at an international award ceremony held in Los Angeles recently. For the second consecutive year, creative directors from Rapid Blue returned from the PROMAX Conference as recipients of Gold Awards for their work on sports and movie campaigns for South African television's M-Net and SuperSport.
The PROMAX Awards are internationally recognised as the prime achievements for promotion and marketing professionals in today's electronic media. Last year's entries provided something of a coup for Rapid Blue when it achieved six awards - four gold and two silver - almost doubling the number of PROMAX awards ever won by a South African production house. This year Rapid Blue repeated their success of outperforming local production companies by bringing home two Golds.
PROMAX is regarded as the world's premier association of promotion and marketing professionals in electronic media - those responsible for building audiences and revenues for their organisations - and the Awards are presented to companies and individuals whose work is judged by a panel of promotion and marketing professionals using the three measures of overall creativity, production quality, and results in achieving marketing objectives.
Last month (June 2002) Rapid Blue's associate creative director Louise Parris achieved her first gold award for the movie promo Fight Club Days for M-Net in the category "Broadcast Television Station (General) - Movie Production - For Theatrical Movies Released to Television".
Creative director and multi award winner Kevin Rixon, along with director Chris Dobson, achieved Gold in the category "Broadcast Television Station (General) - Branding/Image Campaign" for his SuperSport image which television viewers will recognise as the trio of work with the themes of "It's My Life", "Larger Than Life" and "We're Gonna Win". Pierre Cloete, Marketing Manager at SuperSport says this campaign reflects a successful synergy between client, agency (O&M initiated the "It's my life" concept), and Rapid Blue the production house
Rixon has been with the Rapid Blue team for nine years and collaborated with Chris Dobson and Theo Voss-Price on this year's winning production. Recipient of three of the four Gold Awards won by the production house in 2001,Rixon believes the company's promotional campaigns are world class, "up there with the work of leading international entertainment brands such as Warner Brothers and CBS".
"Achieving top honours for the second consecutive year confirms that our work is on a par with the best television productions in the world," he says. "It is extremely rewarding to have our work recognised internationally, and awards such as PROMAX open doors for new business, especially in the global marketplace."
