AMERICAN ADVERTISING AWARDS
American Advertising Federation
Kansas City, MO
I was one of six directors for the 2017 American Advertising Awards for the American Advertising Federation – Kansas City. I was specifically responsible for Creative and Communications. Typically, the creative for this event is done by a local ad agency, but this year the creative was done by our committee.
From day one we decided to do a play on Game of Thrones. We wrote our own story focusing on “The Game of Advertising,” with the help of copywriter Noah Ottinger. Hayley Gallagher handled the print pieces within our comms and I focused on digital, building our communications calendar and making sure everyone knew the tasks that we’d need them for.
Early Entry Deadline
The first of our four events for the AAA’s was the Early Entry Deadline. I learned that receiving submissions was the most important part of our messaging. So, I wanted to make our messaging heavier in the beginning and I even planned for an interactive GIF booth, that could help with a social push.
Shield GIF Booth
Our GIF booth was sponsored by Dimensional Innovations; it was set up at early entry deadline, final entry deadline and the main event.
The GIF booth tracks a white shield and overlays a 3D shield on top. The sigils represent a category within the American Advertising Awards.
Final Entry Deadline & Social Teaser
In order to announce the Final Entry Deadline we released a social teaser that had a call to action tag at the end. Hayley came up with our overall concept in our initial brainstorm and created a fantastic storyboard that we matched pretty closely in the final product. KJO Media filmed and edited our teaser. I was the main contact helping throughout and created the wildfire video for the tv.
Once we released this video we noticed we had around 198 views. Since, this was our last chance to receive submissions, I reserved $25 of our comms budget to promote the video on Facebook. We ended up with 3,702 views and we received the most AAA submissions AAF-KC has had to date.
Additional Social Posts
In between our main messages I created social posts to help keep the AAA’s top of mind and add interest to the story we were telling. Noah Ottinger and I worked together on social copy.
AAA Coins
Luis Suarez modeled and textured the coins. I concepted, sourced audio, animated and color corrected the scene.
Social Copy
Rally your house and prepare for The Game of Advertising. This great game spans many categories with several ways to prosper. Make haste! The Early Entry Deadline is this Friday. https://www.aafkc.com/AAAs
Additional Creative
Kansas City Royalty
The crown was created by Jordan Dean from Dimensional Innovations. I extended the details of the crown based off of the AAA logo, that Hayley designed.
After I designed the layout, I handed it off to Jordan. It was cut from sintra; he then sculpted, molded and hand painted the crown.
MOY/VOY Voting Announcement
I had an idea to do a nod to the Hall of Faces, in order to announce the Members and Volunteers of the year. After capturing the photos we’d need, with the help of photographer Alex Grigsby, I passed on the idea and images to Ashley Kieffer and she executed it flawlessly.
Judging Weekend
Our third event was judging weekend. We had five judges, from across the nation, volunteer their time to judge all of our submitted local work. I worked with Alex Grigsby to record our judges answering a few of our questions. I edited our final videos together and we used them as social posts to help remind AAF-KC members not only the date of the show, but also as a reminder to purchase their tickets. After posting part 1 of the video we had received around 200 views. After seeing the benefits of promoting our teaser, I again set aside $25 to boost this video on Facebook. We received around 2,000 views and 139 more ticket sales than we were expecting, bringing us to 800 tickets.
The intro and outro were created using a purchased template.
Social Shout Outs
I like to use animation as much as possible when I’m creating any comms for AAF-KC, because I feel like even the slightest movement can be attention grabbing. In order to give some attention to all of our sponsors and send out another reminder that the AAA’s were happening on February 18th, I created a sponsor banner video.
KC Cosplay & Photography
From the moment we knew our theme, I thought it would be a great opportunity to work with Dennis Butt from Butthead Studios. I knew he would have connections that we could have attend our event and help add to our ambience. We didn’t share in our communications that there would be cosplayers until a few days before. I felt like this would make it more of a surprise than mentioning it throughout all of our communications.
As soon as attendees entered Arvest Bank Theatre at the Midland they were greeted with cosplayers and a throne photo opp. (Image shared by @dporter1123 on Instagram)
The additional photos were taken by one of our event photographers, Jason Dailey from Jason Dailey Photography.
Game of Advertising Show Intro
The last item I had a hand in building was our show intro. I concepted our map, using the list of AAF-KC corporate members, I placed/animated each agency, sourced our music, built textures for our agencies and animated our camera. Luis Suarez modeled everything, textured/lit our scene and rendered. We worked up until the day before the show on this. We were rewarded by how interactive it became. Each agency cheered when we stopped on theirs; the cheers jumped from group to group throughout the theatre.
Throne of Advertising Battles Past
In Game of Thrones the throne is built from melted swords of past battles. In this case we wanted to use tools that would be used in advertising prior to computers. The throne was designed and built by Jordan Dean, Erick Bachmann and Dennis Butt. The printed backdrop was designed by Hayley Gallagher.
Photos from the Event
An image of the American Advertising Awards Committee. Front Row: Noah Ottinger, Amy Norris, Aron Gelineau, Sarah Dyerson, Tiffany Bidne. Back Row: Hayley Gallagher, Michael McGee, David Sullivan and Emily Rethmeyer (missing Ashley Kieffer). Photo by Jason Dailey Photography.
A view of the stage at Arvest Bank Theatre at the Midland after the intro played. Photo by Matt Meier from Meier2k8 Media.
