Daily Mail wins top design prize

Warc, 8 February 2013

LONDON: The Daily Mail, the newspaper, won the Grand Prix at the 2013 DBA Design Effectiveness Awards for a successful overhaul of its website, undertaken in partnership with agency Brand42.

Held by the Design Business Association each year, the Design Effectiveness Awards seek to recognise brands combining innovative design thinking with a meaningful return on investment. Warc subscribers can view all the winning papers here.

MailOnline, the Daily Mail's internet platform, asked Brand42 to focus on enhancing the user experience and engaging a younger audience, mainly by emphasising editorial content and large images.

"From the start, our programme was very demanding," James Bromley, managing director of MailOnline until December 2012, said. "We needed a design partner that could adapt to our pace."

The aim was to make MailOnline the top newspaper website in the UK. It not only achieved this goal, but even assumed such a role globally, as monthly user levels grew from 18.7m in 2008 to 91.6m in 2012.

Additionally, monthly brand advertising in the UK climbed by 214% between March 2010 and March 2012, and annual online revenues increased from £4.5m in 2008 to an estimated £25m in 2012.

Some 61 awards were handed out at the ceremony overall, including 16 Golds, as well as 24 Silvers and 21 Bronzes.

Another Gold winner was Cadbury, the chocolate brand, for its effort, with agency Blue Marlin, to boost the position of the Bournvita malted drink in India. This case also took the International prize.

"We had a complex challenge on our hands, working with a heritage brand in a challenging and competitive category environment," said Sunainika Singh, category manager, beverages, for Cadbury Kraft India.

The packaging was changed to aid in-store stand out, using a different shape and vivid orange colour. An emotional brand positioning, based on the theme of empowerment, brought this concept fully to life.

Revenues rose by 37% in North India and 25% in West India, helping Bournvita cross what was described as the "magical line" of $100m in sales during 2011 as a whole.

The other Gold winners included Royal Caribbean Cruises, Procter & Gamble's NIOXIN and Reckitt Benckiser's Lysol and Dettol.

Data sourced from Warc