Iggy's Passenger ad rides off with top award

Iggy Pop. Photo / Supplied

The Orcon advertising campaign that connected Iggy Pop and nine New Zealand musicians to his recording studio in Miami has won a major international award.

The ads won the supreme award, the Grand Prix, at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival yesterday.

The Together Incredible campaign, by independent agency Special Group, was also awarded a Gold Lion for winning the direct advertising category. The supreme award was chosen from the winners of 12 categories.

The ads to promote Orcon's broadband service and demonstrate the possibilities of fast broadband connected nine musicians, all at different locations around New Zealand, to Pop's studio in Miami to record a version of The Passenger.

Each musician was connected to the studio through a laptop. Pop had nine laptops lined up so he could direct each musician and hear all the recordings at the same time.

Orcon chief executive Scott Bartlett said that not for a second did he think they would win the "big one".

He said the campaign demonstrated how Orcon "thinks about the market" and communicates with its customers.

The campaign was "commercially very successful", he said, with just under 20,000 new customers signing up to the company's services.