Month: December 2019

Here’s the full list of winners: 

Best Brand/Influencer Collaboration
Karmarama, Influencer, the British Army: “Your Army Needs You”

The British Army wanted to bolster its recruitment, so it turned to the Karmarama agency and social influence company Influencer to build a campaign targeting young people. The third campaign in a series done for the British Army, “Your Army Needs You” is designed to show young people that their resilience, creativity and other skills can serve them well in a military career.

Best Agency/Client Collaboration
Wilderness Agency and Discovery Channel UK

The social media mavens at Wilderness Agency achieved organic reach to the tune of 425 million video views over six months for Discovery Channel UK’s social content. The most extensive bump in engagement came on Facebook, according to David Leggs, Discovery Channel’s marketing communications director.

Most Innovative Use of Content 
DİMES and Yemek.com: DİMES Voice Command

Established in 1963, DİMES launched its Voice Command Assistant in partnership with Yemek.com as a way to further integrate its products into the morning routines of its target audience.

Best In-house Content/Brand Studio
CNN International’s Create

CNN International’s Create in-house creative studio serves the company’s studios around the world and it has crafted campaigns for Visit Budapest, India’s tourism ministry and Lexus.

Best Branded Content Series
Resident Advisor and Asahi: “Japan’s Hidden Listening Bars”

Online music magazine Resident Advisor created a video series in partnership with Japanese beer Asahi to highlight the best listening bars in Tokyo. Listening bars (venues specifically created to listen to DJ-presented music) have been popular in Japan for more than 30 years. These establishments of this nature have opened in recent years across the United States and the United Kingdom.

Best Use of Social
AnalogFolk and Nike Italy, “Nulla Puo Fermaci” (“Stop at Nothing”)

Nike Italy enlisted social media agency AnalogFolk to come up with a message to inspire a new generation of female athletes. The agency created “Stop at Nothing,” a campaign spotlighting four female athletes involved in soccer, boxing and other pursuits as they took on various TikTok and Instagram challenges.

Best Use of Video
Havas Media and Absolut Vodka: “Drop of Love”

Vodka purveyor Absolut wanted its latest limited-edition bottle to serve as a symbol for conveying a message of love in a world that seems to be full of hate. Thus, the campaign showcases ink removed from hate signs at protests that was repurposed into ink for Absolut’s Love bottle.

Best Use of Native Advertising
VG Partnerstudio and Stiftelsen Norsk Luftambulanse

Stiftelsen Norsk Luftambulanse, a Norwegian humanitarian organization that treats people with acute illnesses and injury, turned to VG Partnerstudio to bring to life the story of a man whose Greek vacation nearly ended in a tragedy, averted by his swift actions. The messaging aimed to make clear the need to dial emergency services providers like Stiftelsen Norsk Luftambulanse in such situations.

Best Use of AI
Xaxis, Mindshare, GTB and Ford Norway: “Converting on Cruise Control”

Ford Norway wanted to increase the number of website conversions, so it turned to Xaxis (specifically its division devoted to Europe, the Middle East and Africa) and media agency Mindshare for help. Using a year’s worth of Adobe Analytics material, Xaxis and Mindshare created customized programmatic advertising strategies for different segments of visitors of Ford’s Norwegian website.

Best Product Launch Campaign
Arena Media and Havas Portugal: “Covering Portugal with NOS Giga”

In the summer of 2018, cable operator NOS covered all corners of Portugal for the first time. Arena Media and Havas Portugal brought awareness about its coverage by with the help of the classic Portuguese song “A Minha Casinha” (“My Little House”). They commissioned 11 contemporary Portuguese artists to reimagine the song for a new generation, using only their instruments, voices and NOS’ Gigabit internet network to connect with one another.

Best Paid Social Campaign
Grey London, WPP, Facebook and the United Nations: “The People’s Seat”

Planners hoped September’s Climate Change Conference at the United Nations would end up serving as a historic moment in efforts to address climate change. To open up the conversation about the crucial topic, Grey London created something called the People’s Seat. The agency invited people from all over the world to submit via social media their questions, comments, concerns and fears about climate change. All this input was fashioned into a speech delivered at the conference by acclaimed nature documentarian Sir David Attenborough.

Best Social Good Campaign
Tug Agency and the World Wildlife Fund: “Stop Plastic Pollution”

Last January the World Wildlife Fund worked with Tug Agency to develop a way to highlight the crisis of surging plastic pollution. The resulting petition called for governments and world leaders to arrive at a legally binding agreement to halt the entry of plastics into the ocean by 2030. The goal of gathering 10,000 signatures was far surpassed, with more than 44,000 collected.

Most Effective and Measurable Campaign
British Gas, Mediacom and Flashtalking

In May 2018, Google announced its plans to remove the Google ID from its ad-server log files; this meant that marketers could no longer track Google audiences with external technology. As a result, British Gas opted to switch its ad server from Google to Flashtalking, allowing the utility to own the ad-server data and keep independent attribution, according to Patrick Smith, digital marketing manager for British Gas.

Best Branding Consumer Campaign

Coca-Cola and Rakuten Viber: “Easter Egg Fighter”

Coca-Cola and Rakuten Viber built upon their 2018 Easter bot activation, creating what they believe to be the first in-bot game on Viber. The game, Easter Egg Fighter, has a fully personalized game flow and lets users invite and challenge their friends. The result: 215,000 new members were added to the Viber community profile.

Best Direct Response Campaign
Nano Interactive, VCCP Media, Villa Plus and Sandals

Caribbean holiday cruise line Sandals wanted to attract customers to cruises in December and January. Search marketing agency Nano Interactive created a direct response campaign with contextual advertising and strategic keywords, resulting in a 30 percent rise in conversions from one month to another.

Best Search Campaign
Brainlabs Digital and Eastpak: “Packing a Punch”

Eastpack, which specializes in providing bags, backpacks and travel accessories, tapped Brainlabs to revamp its messaging from zeroing in on its products to highlighting lifestyles and purpose. Keyword bidding was focused on research and exploration terms as opposed to product terms like “backpack.” Users were sent to tailored landing pages that were more about landscapes than products.

Best Multi-Channel Content Distribution Strategy
Initiative Russia and Unilever: “Talking Ice Cream”

When the FIFA World Cup was held in Russia in 2018, Unilever wanted its Inmarko ice cream brand to stand out as the perfect refreshing snack. Its challenge: to support the FIFA theme without being a sponsor. The campaign resulted in sales benchmarks being exceeded. 

Best Influencer Marketing Platform
Influencer

With its influencer-marketing platform founded by creators for creators, Influencer lets influencers connect with campaigns, and brands can vet influencers.

Best Marketing Automation Platform
Impact

Impact offers a software as a service technology platform with a range of automation possibilities for agencies and publishers alike, including influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, mobile partnerships, business development, fraud protection and analytics and attribution.

Agency of the Year
The Goat Agency

As a global influencer marketing agency, Goat stresses that the best way to reach people on social media is through influencers. Thus, it created a customer relationship management system that evaluates the effectiveness of influencers so that brands can make informed decisions about partnerships.

Disruption to traditional advertising and agency models
Advertisers have long facilitated the demand side of platforms, while publishers have fueled the supply side. However, major players like Google and Amazon have created walled gardens, and current agency models are becoming harder to scale with the proliferation of new channels that connect brands to consumers. While these allow brands to advertise outside of traditional mediums like television, it has made the ecosystem much more complex. There is no one vendor that serves as the central supply-side source to keep the ecosystem for brands and advertisers running smoothly — and given the way we consume media, brands need to be able to see across these walled gardens through to all of their other advertising channels.

By the end of 2020, we’ll see a major change in how the ecosystem is plumbed, with adtech integrating into one system for advertisers — or one system for publishers. As big brands come to terms with the demand for transparency, and regulations foster the need for a simpler ecosystem, we can expect significant disruption to existing advertising models. The ideal system will be one that provides a higher level of transparency and accuracy for measurement.

The impact on platform innovation
As brands buy more highly-targeted inventory, platform innovation will also be impacted. In truth, direct marketing platforms were built for one function: advertising. They run on third-party data (that brands use for ad targeting), but they haven’t evolved quickly enough for digital-native brands or to facilitate access to the massive amounts of data that exist. Compare that to a customer data platform, or CDP, which capitalizes on first-party data and makes it possible for brands to reach customers on a much more targeted level. Even companies like Salesforce and Adobe are getting on the CDP bandwagon, validating this trend.

However, the introduction of data privacy regulations creates a double-edged sword of risk and reward for platforms leveraging data. Take location intelligence, for example. It has become an important source of consumer insights for brands and advertisers. Location data continues to be captured at the first-party and third-party levels, but in the EU, GDPR has forced many suppliers into compliance — and out of business.

Data service companies, like Gravy Analytics, are in a unique position because they don’t actually collect data. Rather, they serve as refineries for location insights, cleaning up the raw data to ensure accuracy and mitigate fraud. Whether servicing data at a first-party or third-party level, consent management will be the most important feature for consumer data platforms in 2020 (and beyond), so brands and advertisers can be compliant directly within these platforms.

Regulation is also heightening the need for transparency across the adtech data supply chain, so expect initiatives to clean up the entire ecosystem in 2020. Technologies and services like blockchain and artificial intelligence will influence these kinds of platform innovations.

Compliance as a new opportunity for startups
Not every enterprise needs a robust customer data platform, but all companies need rich consumer insights to inform strategy and decision-making. This will be the year that regulation and compliance evolves from angst and risk to opportunity and reward, especially for investors and startups entering the space. Data companies that prioritize consumer privacy and are prepared to comply with new regulations will be most attractive to investors — and have more staying power. I foresee a gold rush-like effect in which big data is the gold, for those that are bold enough to dare.

We’re at a crossroads. Ahead of regulations like CCPA taking effect next year, companies are grappling with how to take on big tech’s efforts to dictate new legislation and not get squeezed out of existence — while investors are adjusting their strategies to account for the ambiguity of foreshadowed consumer privacy regulations. Brands too should take this opportunity to re-think customer engagement in an environment where trust is earned and compliance is a functional byproduct rather than the end product. As with any new regulations, there are risks and rewards for all involved.