Last month, the Effie Awards South Africa announced the winners for this year. The Grand Effie winner was TBWA\ Hunt Lascaris’ for its client, the City Lodge Group, for the campaign, SOS - Save Our Stay, for which the agency also won gold.

The Effie Awards reward effectiveness and impact in advertising, and TBWA\Hunt Lascaris’ SOS campaign embodies this, bringing together strategy, creativity and measurement into an example of disciplined creativity.

The campaign starts with the premise that the travel industry has changed and hotels are no longer only competing with each other; they face competition from Airbnb, novelty experiences and interesting curated finds.

In comparison, City Lodge is quite boring and predictable.

But the agency turned this perceived negative into a positive as Steph van Nielkerk, executive creative director at TBWA\Hunt Lascaris, explains.

“It all revolves around the insight that everyone’s got a bad story about a disappointing sta,y and it resonates because it is truly an experience that everyone relates to.”

But this was not enough, says van Niekerk.

Read the full article in Bizcommunity here: https://www.bizcommunity.com/article/effies2025-tbwa-city-lodge-sos-grand-effie-campaign-730812a