The “Small Business Saturday” campaign Digitas and Crispin Porter + Bogusky created with American Express has been named the top winner the first-ever Facebook Studio Awards, topping more than 1,000 submissions Facebook received.
While Small Business Saturday launched in late 2010, the six-member judging panel chose to award the work top honors because of its sustained momentum, said Young & Rubicam’s global CEO David Sable, who served as a judge.
“When we looked at it, we said, 'You know what, this is really the inspiring campaign because this campaign has legs. It’s not a one-off. It’s been recognized as an official by the Congress of the United States. It drives business. It’s become embedded in the way people shop and the way small business use media,'” Sable said. “In a sense this is the ultimate validation of the power of Facebook when used right.”
Joining Sable on the judging panel were JWT North America chief creative officer Jeff Benjamin, Leo Burnett U.S.A. chief creative officer Susan Credle, R/GA North America evp and chief creative officer Nick Law, Evolution Bureau executive creative director Stephen Goldblatt and Facebook director of global creative solutions Mark D’Arcy.
The judges appraised entrants in four areas: whether the work motivated sharing; whether it made full use of Facebook’s marketing programs; whether it was part of a larger multimedia campaign; and how easy it was to interact with and share content from the campaign.
While Digitas was the only agency to receive the Blue award, nine agencies were named winners in the Gold, Silver and Bronze tiers.
Gold winners included Evolution Bureau for Juicy Fruit’s “Serenading Unicorn” campaign; Walker Werbeagentur Zurich for the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland’s “What Zurich Needs” campaign; Hasan & Partners for the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art’s “Make a Better One Yourself, Then” campaign; and Duval Guillaume Modem for Belgian magazine Flair’s “Fashion Tag” campaign. Mattijs Devroedt, strategic planner at Duval Guillaume Modem, said he hopes the award will raise international awareness of the agency’s social capabilities.
The judges named two winners in the Silver tier—Zaraguza Digital and Noise—and four at the Bronze level: LiveAD, Evolution Bureau, R/GA and Imagination.
Facebook launched Facebook Studio in April as a platform to connect agencies, showcase their Facebook-related work and drive creativity. The company concocted the Facebook Studio Awards as a way to further amplify the effort because agencies “look to awards as a place of recogntion and a place for inspiration,” said Facebook’s head of agency marketing Jennifer Kattula.
“You have the top creative minds that were on our jury, and they’re…making a statement to the world that this is what social creativity looks like on Facebook,” she added.
Kattula said Facebook plans to continue the awards and is brainstorming what next year’s edition could entail, such as introducing new awards categories. “In a lot of ways it’slet’s design the awards so that we recognize what’s happening but also align to the evolution of the product as well,” she said.
Facebook will further its efforts this year with an education push over the next three to four months that will see the addition of learning modules to Facebook Studio to walk agencies and advertisers through the core concepts of how to use Facebook’s products for sustainable marketing purposes, Kattula said.
