A brand activation campaign for the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development, created by VMLY&R, has won the top prize — the Super REGGIE — in the 2020 ANA REGGIE Awards competition.
The award was presented at the ANA REGGIE Awards Virtual Half-Day Conference. 69 gold, silver, and bronze REGGIE awards were presented to brands and their agencies honoring the best Brand Activation marketing campaigns of 2019 across 23 different categories. Brands winning multiple Gold REGGIES included Burger King, Eaton, Frito-Lay, Pepsi, and OREO.
The Tennessee campaign, called “Laugh Tracker,” won gold in the Creativity & Innovation category and represented a multimedia approach that included branded content, digital ads, email, out-of-home, social media, video, microsites, and influencers. The creation of a “Laugh Tracker” device helped families record their fun at various state attractions and generated data that the Department mined for marketing insights. The effort’s goal was to drive interest and travel to Tennessee by vacationing families, which research showed spend 39 percent more on travel than non-family travelers.
The campaign’s budget was $500,000–$1 million and the results were impressive: it drove almost six million hotel and flight searches (354 percent above goal), increased hotel demand by 4.2 percent (11 percent above goal), and generated a ratio of $142/$1 return on ad spend ($42 above goal).
Categories in the overall competition included experiential, digital/social media, sponsorship, influencer, brand purpose, content, B2B, and age-specific campaigns. The competition included campaigns with budgets ranging from less than $250,000 to more than $3 million.
The award name, REGGIE, was originally chosen because it symbolizes results by “making the cash register ring” with consumers. The 37th annual Super REGGIE award recognizes the highest level of achievement and is awarded to the “best in class” from the more than 20 Gold category winners.
More than 200 judges — industry experts at director/VP level or higher — scored each entry based on the following criteria:
- Is the strategy in line with the insights and goals?
- What is the level of concept originality?
- How well were the materials integrated and activation executed? (Specific to the category)
- How strong were the results, and did they achieve business objectives? (volume/share/profit)
- How well did the activation build the brand and align with the overall brand?
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