This category recognizes the influencer marketing campaigns that involve the creation of original video content through a collaboration between a brand & creator.

Air Wick Essential Mist Hygge (WINNER)

CLIENT: AIR WICK

AGENCY: KIN COMMUNITY, THE STORY LAB

ABOUT THE ENTRY

To inspire the use of Air Wick Essential Mist, Kin and The Story Lab built a branded content strategy tapping into the millennial mega-trend of “hygge”. Hygge is about mindful details, and through content from Creators Nina Huynh and Alexandra Gater we showed how Air Wick Essential Mist helps make any space cozier and more relaxing.

Full length YouTube video integrations incorporated brand messaging in the voice of the creators while showcasing the product in their own space. The content on YouTube was then versioned to run as social ads across all social platforms, including Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram.

In partnership with Kin Canada, Air Wick tapped into the right insight with the right creators to produce a highly efficient ecosystem of content that resonated with the brand’s target millennial audience to raise both awareness and consideration while building the brand’s funnel.

This content is a great example of why it’s so important for brands to trust the creators they partner with to produce content that will resonate best with their target audience. They partnered with the creators to produce full length YouTube videos, :15s Pre-Rolls, :06s Pre-Rolls, IG/FB :06s Video Ads, IG/FB Carousel Ads, Instagram Story Ads and Pinterest Ads. Through the strategic production and distribution of these assets, this campaign also proves the power of using branded content through the entire marketing funnel to drive consumers through to conversion and trial.

The New Mad Jack Fam

CLIENT: MOLSON COORS – MAD JACK

AGENCY: CITIZEN RELATIONS

ABOUT THE ENTRY

A part of every legal drinking aged university student’s life is the Pre-Game. It is the start of every great night out with friends. Citizen Relations amplified Pre-Game of influential legal drinking age Gen-Zs before the hottest summer events. Turning their pre-game into an Epic Instagramable Pre. They engaged eight Influencers in Ontario, QC and Alberta to develop a curated Summer content calendar integrating the product in a natural way that relates to their profile. To maximize reach within the legal drinking age Gen Z demographic, they proactively seeded products throughout the summer to drive trial among their target demo.

They leveraged key insights of their target demographic including the fact that they look to their peers for guidance and inspiration and they find video more engaging to create an influencer program that would be impactful among our Gen-Z target. The program featured Gen Z content made by Gen Z. Beyond the content that engaged with the influencer’s online community they co-created experiences with them to connect with their community offline and drive trial of Mad Jack with our target audience.

The video content was so engaging the brand was able to leverage the content for their social channels and put paid promotion behind each piece of content. The integration of the campaign led to strong sales results for Mad Jack in Quebec and Ontario surpassing volume sales goals for the year.

Wendy’s Made to Crave with a Side of Magic

CLIENT: WENDY’S

AGENCY: COLLAB

ABOUT THE ENTRY

This is a great example of how an established QSR brand – Wendy’s — moved beyond the :30 spot to promote its new ‘cravable’ chicken sandwich. With its tagline “upgrade from basic,” Wendy’s sought amazing digital influencer talent to tell its story in a new, organic way. Going beyond the norm, Wendy’s identified stop-motion animator and video wizard, Kevin Parry. Kevin produces his own special effects for his videos. His creative voice stands-out from the vast majority of online content.

The brief: create visual content demonstrating the ease of upgrading your chicken sandwich on Wendy’s Made To Crave menu.

Reaching consumers is relatively easy, but actually connecting with them has never been harder. Wendy’s stepped out of its traditional media comfort zone to work with an online influencer, Kevin Parry, whose personality and audience matches that of the brand while bringing his own unique spice to the table.

We know that consumers applauded the effort because the videos shattered the goals and industry engagement norms on both Instagram and Twitter.