Brand experience

Cindy Gallop’s Black Apartment in New York was once again the setting for the third North American Effie Awards Brand Experience judging session in March. Our judges agree, the apartment’s black lacquered walls, avant guard high heel collection and provocative objets d’art epitomize the spirit of this category. It is a Brand Experience- and an energizing and innovative one at that, from the judging location to the judges themselves. This year’s jury had a dynamic dialogue about the nature of brand experience in today’s industry and why this year’s winners stood out. Here’s a window to the conversation of the 2011 jury.

Speaking to why the Brand Experience category is one of Effie North America’s top entry categories since its introduction in 2009, juror Nick Moore EVP, Chief Creative Officer, Wunderman speculated that it is because the category “talks to most of what we do now.” That the category understands where the customer touches the brand and where the brand touches the customer.

Judge Max Lenderman, Director of Outeractive at Crispin Porter + Bogusky added,“I think experience, or experiential, is the perfect bridge between traditional and digital marketing. Traditional shops are looking for ways to make their work more effective, and digital shops need to create engagement beyond the screen. These two worlds meet in the Brand Experience category, giving a great platform to judge both the creativity and the efficacy of an idea in the real world in front of real people.” On the topic of the winners, the conversation centered on results achieved. From an effectiveness standpoint, here’s why the judges awarded a Gold Effie in the Brand Experience category for the first time – to Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” Responds to the Internet: “They changed the rules all at once and achieved amazing results. It’s a glimpse of the future, the next standard that we should all be aspiring to.”

“The Old Spice campaign completely reinvented the brand in an unbelievably short period of time. They leveraged old media as well as social media in an incredibly innovative way, providing an almost real time experience for consumers. They executed brilliantly and delivered unbelievable growth.”

-Joey Bergstein, SVP Marketing, Global Rum at Diageo, member of the 2011 Effie Brand Experience Jury Discussing the winning Starbucks Sparks case, judges pointed to its efforts to bring together brand and experience in daily life at a local level.

Although both cases were different, here’s what our judges said they had in common: “Every campaign tried to change culture. That’s the job of good creative. It’s not about crafting ideas to fit our social norms and cultural assumptions. Our job is to disturb those norms and instill completely new cultural assumptions. There’s bravery in every one of the winning ideas. And bravery should always be rewarded.”

“Both took very bold decisions to forge a new way of engaging consumers on brands that were well known. Both executed with an incredible attention to detail. And both delivered phenomenal results.”