The short film was premiered in March 2014, just in time for the opening of the new KUKA production facility in Shanghai. In the video, Timo Boll – the brand ambassador for KUKA in China – challenges the KUKA KR AGILUS small robot to a table tennis match. The video has since been viewed about 5.9 million times on YouTube. Together with Sassenbach Advertising, an agency based in Munich, KUKA Roboter GmbH has already collected numerous awards in various categories this year.
The first prize came in May. The Timo Boll campaign won the 2014 German Prize for Online Communication in the ‘Best Image Film on the Web’ category. The prize honors achievements in the area of digital communication. Four months later, in September 2014, ‘The Duel’ was also victorious in the ‘Image Film’ category of the Digital Communication Awards 2014 . The prize is awarded for 38 categories in every area of digital communication such as social media, online strategy or B2B communication. A further highlight came in September: the campaign made it to the New York Festivals finals in the ‘World’s Best Advertising’ category. And since, as the saying goes, all good things come in threes, the campaign also won the ‘Best of the Best 2014’ red dot award in October. The prize awards outstanding design quality in the ‘Advertising’ category.
In addition to three gold medals, the Timo Boll campaign also won a silver and a bronze. In mid-October, the film won second place at the Marconomy B2B Marketing Awards. First place went to ‘This is Sick’, a piece by the Reinclassen agency for sensor manufacturer Sick. Campaigns that have a clear marketing and communications focus and are aimed at B2B target groups receive the white ‘m’. At the CommAwards ceremony at the end of October, KUKA and Sassenbach jointly won third place in the category ‘the pixel’, right behind industry giants Mercedes Benz AG in second place and the winner, BMW AG. In the four categories (‘the advertisement’, ‘the poster’, ‘the pixel’ and ‘the place’), nearly 400 entries were sent in.
Recently, at the beginning of December KUKA ‘The Duel’ won the fourth gold medal. The campaign with Timo Boll fully convinced the jury of the European Excellence Awards 2014 in the category ‘Corporate Film and Video’. The award ceremony took place in Paris in December.