How do you win a Grand Effie?

AA Insurance and McCann New Zealand won the Grand Effie at the 2026 Effie Awards Aotearoa, announced on October 22. It’s the highest honour of the night, recognising eight years of the ‘Live a little freer’ platform.

But what made the campaign stand out? StopPress editor Penny Murray sat down with Simon Lendrum, CEO of the Comms Council which runs the Effies, and convenor of judges Murray Streets to hear why it won and what the rest of us can learn.

Lessons from the Effies

Simon Lendrum: I think ‘Eight years of living a little freer’ provides some really concrete lessons. The more strategically robust the platform is from the beginning, the more likely you are to be able to refresh a campaign over time but stay absolutely core to the positioning. So you see compounding effects, not simply repeated effects.

‘Live a little freer’ also won the Sustained Success category this year. And in fact, it was a gold in the Sustained Success category three years ago. So it continues to deliver. Murray, what did you see in that paper?

Clear story

Murray Streets: It was able to tell a really clear story of how they went about trying to overcome some disadvantages they had. So for example, AA is known as a motoring brand, they weren’t so well known for insurance. And they were being outspent by direct insurance competitors, so they had to find a new angle in on how to present their offering.

They went for an emotional platform based around the freedom and the release from fear rather than doubling down on the fear that insurance tends to trade on. It was a very elegant reframing of the category convention.

And then they brought that to life. Not only one year, two year, three years, four years, five years… I mean eight years later through very, very different market conditions: Covid, sugar rush spike in the market, then economic recession.

They were able to establish that platform and then extend it executionally through storytelling, through TV and through AV. But also introduce other elements to the brand and some of the brand experience that AA introduced.

So you’ve got the story, and then you’ve got this step-by-step best practice demonstration: these were our objectives, this is what we were trying to do, we saw this effect, we also saw this effect, then we saw that effect. They demonstrated value driven to the business, and were able to show sales increases and market share increases as well. So it was the ultimate package. It showcases the power of compounding creativity – one of the magic ingredients of effective advertising.

Advertising’s magic ingredients

StopPress: What are the others?

Murray Streets: Well, there are lots of magic ingredients in effective advertising, and certainly a couple of them come through in this paper. Time and market and consistency, and then the ability to do variations on a theme.

So you’re getting that balance between: “I know what they stand for, it’s distinctive, I know the brand,” and then: “Oh, there’s something fresh, something new over time.”

They really demonstrated how the business benefited from the way the marketing was constructed and endured over time. That just makes it an absolute masterclass of how advertising – consistently backed and then refreshed and stewarded over time – actually drove those results.

At the moment we all think in social terms. We’re thinking in months and sales quarters, and they were just able to roll out these proofs over eight years.

It’s very, very impressive. It embodies all those attributes of highly effective long-term profitable growth that advertising can produce for business.

Get the results, present the case

StopPress: And it sounds like the paper was well articulated too.

Murray Streets: Correct. There’s an element of: how do you construct the story in a way that compels as well as convinces judges? You’ve got to get those two things right as well. But it was well-structured, logical, clearly written, easy to follow and judges weren’t having to decode lots of jargon. It was written for judges to be able to understand and to bring them on the journey. And it did that very, very well. The best papers do that. They compel and convince. Yeah.

StopPress: But if there weren’t the results to start with, you can’t just tell a good story…

Simon Lendrum: No. The judges are very, very quick to dismiss entries that are well crafted but empty.

Murray Streets: Yes. They get to the final section and go: “Is that it?” You can’t just get away with telling a rhetorical story. You have to back it up with the proof.

Simon Lendrum: Our judging process is so rigorous: three rounds of judging presided over by a convener. Every entry is really scrutinised and given its fair dues.

So the work that emerges victorious has threaded the needle to get gold and certainly to get to Grand Effie. And the Grand Effies over the years are some of the campaigns we’d remember vividly and fondly – from Jamie Oliver for Pams in 2002 all the way up to this year’s winner. So it really is the best of the best.

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