The annual Bookmark Awards, which celebrates excellence and innovation in digital media, was held last night at the Turbine Hall in Newtown, Johannesburg, and proved yet again that the South African digital landscape is very much alive and kicking.
This was the 7th Bookmark Awards, and this year they received close to 800 entries.
Hosted by Youtube-famous comedienne, Anne Hirsch, a total of 13 gold, 34 silver and 44 bronze awards were given to various agencies and individuals making waves in the South African digital space.
This year, big, respected agencies seemed to clean up most of the awards with young and smaller agencies also taking home some awards and showing a lot of promise for the future of digital creativity in the country.
Big agencies like Ogilvy, Gloo, Quirk and the King James Group had a very successful night, sweeping most of the categories and some big awards.
In the brand, commercial and retail websites category, Quirk took home a silver award for the Capitec Bank website, while Hellocomputer bagged a silver for The Journal microsite.
Utopia took home a gold award for The Penguin Run in the Public Service sites category, while Hellocomputer took home a bronze in the same category.
Media24, in association with digital agencies OnNet and Spacestation, bagged a bronze award for the popular Drum Magazine website in the Publisher site category, while Primedia Broadcasting won silver for Eyewitness News.
In the Specialist Publisher site category, Between 10and5 won a gold award, along with Both Worlds for ZA News. OnNet won a bronze award for the relaunch of eatout.co.za.
In the Search Marketing category, Quirk took home yet another award, this time gold, for their Always On Media Campaign for Woolworths and R.O.I Digital as well as Saatchi & Saatchi Synergize won silver in the same category.
Gloo won a silver award in the Social Media Properties category as well as a gold award in the User Generated Content category for their FNB Ideas Can Help campaign.
The Bookmarks also have special honours awards which celebrate the best of the best. This year, the Best Publisher award went to Eyewitness News, the Best Marketing Organisation award went to Unilver, while the Best Individual Contribution went to Fred Roed form Worldwide Creative and the coveted Best Agency award was awarded to Gloo.
Congratulations to all of the winners, it is always amazing to see how the digital media landscape in South Africa improves year by year. And while the big companies still deliver amazing and inspiring work, it is just as exciting to see what the young startups come up with.
Here‘s to a wonderful, innovative and creative 2015 in the digital space of South Africa.
For a full list of winners, click here.
