BBDO’s frog chorus charms Audio jury
- Jun 23
- 2 min read
The winner of this year’s Audio & Radio Grand Prix is the inspired 'Coquí Alarmed’ campaign, created by BBDO Puerto Rico for Korean car giant Hyundai.
The campaign came about after a tourist posted on social media asking how to silence the coquí — a small frog with a distinctive call. The comment caused a huge anti-tourism backlash among Puerto Ricans, who regard the coquí as a key part of their national identity.
Hyundai Puerto Rico and BBDO Puerto Rico saw an opportunity — and replaced the lock and unlock alarm sound of Hyundai rental cars with the call of the coquí. By using this natural sound, Hyundai turned a boring and repetitive daily interaction sound into a cultural moment and conservation effort.
Jury President Oriel Davis-Lyons, chief creative officer of Mother New York, said the deceptively simple campaign “reminded people of the importance of these frogs. It reached the point where people requested the sound for their own vehicles. It’s such a specific local idea but the insight was immediately clear and universally admired in the jury room.” Looking at the audio and radio entries as a whole, Davis-Lyons said the jury was struck by how the category “stretches and expands every year” — with the inclusion of a car-locking noise a case in point. In terms of what they were looking for he said “impact; and the ability to surprise us and make us think differently.”
Alongside the Grand Prix winner there were Gold Lions for IKEA/Rethink Toronto and Abradee/Africa Creative, Sao Paolo. The former was based around recordings of ‘sleep talkers’ experiencing new mattresses while the latter used birds sitting on energy wires as the inspiration for an original music composition.
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