Herald and NZME sweep awards

Our Break the Silence campaign and election coverage were winners.

The Herald and its publisher NZME have swept the prestigious Australasian and Pacific news media awards with eight major wins — including the highly coveted best daily newspaper and website award.

The Herald beat Australian titles including the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, the Age, the Daily Telegraph and the Courier Mail and New Zealand website Stuff to win best daily news brand at the Inform News Media Awards in Sydney.

And NZME's advertising, marketing and subscriber teams featured prominently, with seven major wins including best execution of print advertising and best execution of digital advertising.

The Herald's editorial entry — covering the daily newspaper and nzherald.co.nz — included coverage of the 2017 general election, the Break the Silence campaign to reduce youth suicide, and a suite of major, agenda-setting investigations and news exclusives.

"This accolade recognises a huge year for our newsrooms across New Zealand, including the unveiling of our new website and record audiences for the NZ Herald — in all its forms," said NZME managing editor Shayne Currie.

NZME chief executive Michael Boggs paid tribute to teams across the business.

"These awards are wonderful recognition of our journalism, the way we have worked collaboratively with our commercial clients and partners, and our marketing and creative teams. I would also like to acknowledge our clients who have trusted us with their brands, bringing their campaigns to life across our multi-platform, audience-focused business.
"A huge congratulations to those involved in the projects."

NZME won four major advertising awards:
●Best execution of print advertising for a client, for the Women-in-leadership collaboration with Westpac that featured a special-edition Herald front page.
●Best execution of digital advertising for a client, for the Click & Play collaboration with Brand USA.
●Best execution of native advertising for a client for The Survivors Collection, in collaboration with the NZ Breast Cancer Foundation.
●Best execution of an integrated campaign for a client, for This is Where with Brand USA.

NZME also featured prominently as winners in the trade and marketing categories, with these big awards:
●Best trade marketing campaign, for Audiences Captured, a campaign that highlighted NZME's growing reach across New Zealand, now at more than 3.2 million people each week.
●Best consumer brand campaign for Discover More, the campaign that helped launch and promote the new-look nzherald.co.nz last year.
●Best subscriber acquisition campaign for the Creative DM Design Challenge.