CHICAGO: Tip Top, the ice cream brand owned by Fonterra of New Zealand, has won the top Diamond Award at the 2013 Direct Marketing Association International ECHO Awards, with another 89 campaigns honoured.

A total of 16 Golds, 31 Silvers and 39 Bronzes were presented, as well as four special awards, to recognise excellence in creativity, marketing strategy and response results in direct marketing campaigns.

Warc subscribers can browse Gold and Silver winning case studies here.

The Diamond ECHO - considered the best-in-show award - went to the 'Feel Tip Top' campaign, devised by agency Colenso BBDO, for making an ice cream brand more relevant and modern to consumers and increasing sales by 1.5m units.

Gold award winners included the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, World Vision Canada, Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund and Audi, the German automaker.

The campaign for the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, organised by agency iris, was recognised for using a creative stunt to promote a musical and drive ticket sales within a limited budget – local press coverage, supported by digital strategies, generated 8m media impressions in 24 hours.

World Vision Canada, whose agency was Russ Reid Company, highlighted the Horn of Africa famine crisis in its annual fundraising drive and raised 45% more donations on the previous year.

Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund, the financial services company, won Gold for a campaign that targeted Tier 2 towns in India to promote its Recurring Savings Plan – over $200k was pledged against mailing costs of $12.5k.

A Gold Award also went to Audi and its agency CP Proximity for a campaign which invited consumers in Spain to take an 'email test drive' to highlight the brand's technological innovation.

This campaign was the most effective email out of the 150 sent by the brand in 2012, but was also the most cost effective and efficient action out of the entire launch plan for the automaker's A1 and A3 models.

Data sourced from DMA; additional content by Warc staff