With an in-house team of around 80 people, TV 2 Denmark scored big at the 2020 Promax Europe Awards, winning 13 golds and eight silvers across seven campaigns. All of that tallied up to make TV 2 Promax Europe’s 2020 Marketing Team of the Year.

TV 2 first caught the world’s attention in 2017 with this still relevant “All That We Share” spot, which won two golds and two silvers at the 2018 Promax Europe Awards.

The channel has only built from there under the leadership of Marketing Director Jacob Weinreich.

“We’ve constantly been proving that we weren’t just a one-off making a great spot in 2018,” said Weinreich, who spent a decade working doing marketing work in the financial arena in the UK, so came to TV 2 with plenty of experience in global marketing but not much in TV. That doesn’t seem to have hindered him though.

“For the past three and a half years, we’ve been winning prizes all over the world for work done in this little tiny country,” he said. “This is not something you would expect but once you have it, you keep nursing it.”

This year, it won awards for more spots under the “All That We Share” campaign as well as work for the channel’s annual “Fight Cancer” campaign and to promote voting in the Danish General Election. Sports was a big part of the win, including campaigns for TV 2 Sport X and fun spots for the Handball World Cup, which was played in January 2019. It also marketed new streaming service TV 2 Play, and finally, did some whimsical work for reality competition series, Strictly Come Dancing.

“It makes the year more special for us,” said Weinreich. “If we only had one big campaign that was the reason we won, that would be one thing, but because we won due to a variety of different campaigns, that’s even more special and validating.”

Asked how Weinreich manages to get so much creativity out of his n-house team, he said: “I was super inspired by all the work done by the BBC and 4 Creative in the UK,” where he lived for ten years. “I wanted to try and challenge ourselves to see whether we could match those guys. Part of that is that you have to surround yourself with good people—people who don’t just get one great win and then sit back. They constantly ask themselves, ‘how do we improve next year?’”

TV 2 Denmark does rely on some out-of-house directors and freelancers and is looking forward to further expanding its rosters to include more non-Danish directors, Weinreich said.

Five gold and one silver came from one campaign alone, encouraging everyone to vote in the Danish General Election, held June 5, 2019. Like its “All That We Share” campaign, the channel’s work for these spots focuses on one central concept—the one-meter-by-one-meter box, in this case—and expands it into an overall theme.

Danish General Election

Similarly, the channel’s “All That We Share” message of connectedness holds just as true as ever in 2020. In this year’s version of the spot, 40 people who think they are strangers learn that they are actually connected by powerful emotional bonds. The below spot won gold for long-form promotional content and silver in the “I’m Not Crying, You Are!” category.

All That We Share 2020

The channel’s annual “Fight Cancer” campaign almost always wins awards and this year was no different with a set of emotional spots. As such, it has become a point of pride among TV 2 Denmark’s team to get to work on it.

“Once a year we do ‘Fight Cancer,’ and that’s a huge week for us,” Weinreich said. “We spend four or five months prepping for it. We keep it as a carrot and if you’re performing, if you’re a great member of the team, then you love these carrots because we do big things all the time. For some people, that’s a great motivator.”

The Fight Cancer team is always relatively big, with 10-12 people participating, Weinreich said, including creative directors, art directors, social media managers, designers and more.

This year’s spot won gold in Promax Europe’s “I’m Not Crying, You Are” category, meaning TV 2 really made the jury shed some tears this year.

Fight Cancer

Changing tones completely, TV 2 turned to humor to promote its new TV 2 Sports X channel, having a lot of fun rewriting the dialogue for existing sports footage. The painted-on look of the typography also adds a modern feel.

This campaign won gold for one of Promax Europe’s major awards: general brand campaign: channel, network or platform.

TV 2 Sports X Film 1

TV 2 Sports X Film 2

TV 2 Sports X Film 3

The team turned to a similarly clever brand of humor for spots promoting the Men’s Handball World Cup in January 2019, winning silver for general image campaign and gold for key art. The below spot also won gold for best use of a celebrity, influencer or talent on social media.

Handball World Cup, ‘Lie Detector’

The team took a fanciful approach when it came to promoting reality format Strictly Come Dancing, placing dancers in real-world situations to make short-form films. The below spot was among three that together earned silver in the category of entertainment/comedy/variety/music programme spots.

Strictly Come Dancing

Finally, Danish Game of Thrones star Pilou Asbæk pitched in to help TV 2 launch its new streaming service, TV 2 Play, helping the channel capture silver in the category of short-form promotional content.

TV 2 Play streaming service

“The wonderful part of being in-house is that you have won your pitch already—you are here,” said Weinreich. “It demands a lot of leadership and management skills to keep these teams constantly infused with energy and to create a workspace where they love to come.”

Weinreich seems to be accomplishing just that at TV 2 Denmark and the proof is in the wins.

Tags: promax europe promax europe 2020 promax europe awards 2020 tv 2 denmark


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