2015 Digiday Awards finalists reflect growing diversity in creative partners
You can dip a pretzel in hummus, salsa or baba ganoush. But for its Digiday-Award nominated social campaign, “House of Gold,” Rold Gold plunged its pretzel thins into intrigue, betrayal and ambition. The 17-episode social videos have racked up more than 1 million views each.
The work, up for Best New Product Launch at the 2015 Digiday Awards, was put together by AOR Deep Focus, its first such effort since the 1990s. And it’s not alone. About half of this year’s finalists are not full-service advertising agencies — a marked change from last year, when full-service agencies accounted for 86 percent of finalists.
The shift may reflect a growing trend among brands to experiment with other, specialized partners, namely social agencies, content creation agencies and publishers. Among the non-advertising agency finalists are NewsCred and Bloomberg Business for Best Brand Platform, digital media company Woven Digital for Best Branding Consumer Campaign and publisher Forbes BrandVoice for Best Publishing Platform.
Chobani CMO Peter McGuinness is one marketer who argues for keeping creative work in house. “It’s one thing to brief an agency and to give feedback to an agency on their work,” he told Digiday. “And it’s another to create it. Creating is believing, creating is seeing and creating is contagious.”
This year’s Digiday Awards, which will be handed out Nov. 19, may be one litmus test to see if Rold Gold’s efforts and those of other agency challengers can hold up to established shops like Havas Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi LA and others.
The full list of finalists follows:
Best Brand Platform
Call of Duty: Hack in Black
Best Branding B2B Campaign
Lockheed Martin Engineering a Better Tomorrow
Mad Men McCann versus Real McCann
Checkpoint Catalyst Marketing Campaign
Best Branding Consumer Campaign
HUMAN: An UPROXX Original Series, In Partnership with Coors Banquet
State of the Art by SapientNitro for Ferrari
Best Creative
Best Direct Response Campaign
The North Face Braves the Storm with Winter Weather Targeting
Miami Dolphins Samsung Business Preview Center Campaign
Best Product Launch
Toyota 4Runner Social Media Campaign
Best Publishing Platform
IJ.Com for the Independent Journal
New York Times T-Brand Studio “Plan Your Next Adventure”
Best Social Good Campaign
The Salvation Army “#RedKettleReason” Annual Giving Campaign
(RED) & Coca Cola Share the Sound of an AIDS Free Generation
Best Use of Mobile
Burger King Chicken Fries emoji keyboard
Audi Redefines Second Screen TV with “Pretty Little Liars” & Snapchat
Horizon Media & Skin Wars, Season 2
Best Use of Social
Audi Redefines Second Screen TV with “Pretty Little Liars” & Snapchat
*Featured at the Digiday Career Fair, October 1,2015
More in Announcement
Olipop, Digitas and Front Office Sports are among the 2025 Digiday Awards winners
This year’s Digiday Awards winners reflect how brands are redefining consumer engagement through interactivity, cross-platform reach and data-driven personalization. The chosen campaigns stood out for using emotional storytelling to build authentic connections and for creating experiences that sparked anticipation around product launches. Global cultural relevance also played a defining role, with brands tailoring their strategies […]
Warner Bros. Discovery, Critical Mass and Instacart are finalists for this year’s Digiday Awards
This year, brands, retailers and publishers have further embraced innovation and emerging technology to foster unique, adaptive and highly relevant consumer interactions. This is clear among the finalists for the 2025 Digiday Awards, who also tapped into cultural trends and the zeitgeist to remain top-of-mind with audiences, with creative being tied directly to measurable results […]
The Walt Disney Company, Grammarly and Intuit Mailchimp are 2025 Digiday Technology Awards winners
This year’s Digiday Technology Awards celebrate companies that are embracing AI and automation tools to enhance personalized experiences, enable precise targeting and drive performance across platforms and channels. Winners are also integrating advanced e-commerce technologies and focusing on measurement and analytics solutions that unveil deeper performance tracking. In the new Best Video Advertising Platform category, […]