THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media and digital. View this season's finalists!
From the 7th Annual Shorty Awards

The 88

Finalist in Small Agency

Objectives

Five years ago, The 88 was built on a single desk at 88 Prince Street in New York City. We started as a single client agency, and have grown exponentially in size, revenue, and talent since.

Utilizing our team's diverse, global expertise, we were able to grasp the strong potential in social media early on, and took the initiative to build a niche in the industry, while many others held on to traditional marketing techniques.

Professionals in each specific department at The 88 – whether creative, strategy, community management, analytics, photography, graphic design, or copywriting – have collaborated over the years to build a stronger 88 today. Their diversified talents and background have enabled us to fulfill the needs of clients across many categories, to serve multiple objectives.

Our team of creators develop rich, enticing content that stands out not only because of its aesthetic, but also because of the thoughtful strategy that serves as its backbone. We've used this content as a bridge for our clients to communicate with consumers across social platforms in a way that's exciting, effective, and memorable.

For two consecutive years, we've doubled in size and in revenue. A success we attribute to the premium we place on our team members, the focus we place on cultivating individual talents in young people, and the true partnerships we create with our clients.

Strategy and Execution

Our team's experiences in traditional media, paired with the deep relationships we have with digital influencers around the world, enables us to create authentic, well-crafted, strategic content that understands audience needs and desires on social media platforms, and fulfill them in a way unique to our clients' brand audiences.

As an agency, we have a strong connection with the Instagram community (many of our employees are themselves "Instagram influencers"). This connection has served to strengthen the confidence we have in social media as one of the most effective media channels in existence, as well as enabled us to ideate and strategize from personal experience.


Our influencer program for illy issimo's #WakeUpGrade campaign clearly portrays our strong ability to be efficient, strategic and creative by leveraging our relationship with influencers around the country. Through the "illy issimo Insiders" we were able to connect with the millennial audience across four specific pillars: music, food, fashion and sports. By exploring the morning rituals of these influencers, we created a content series on YouTube with a small media budget during the summer of 2014. By recruiting influencers and producing content that allowed them to promote the product in their own unique ways, we built an element of authenticity that followed the tradition and history of illy Coffee.

-Reached over 13 million impressions and gained over 11K followers all across illy issimo's social channels within four months

-#WakeUpGrade Influencer Videos: Theophilus London: Photographer, Eddie Huang: Chef, Vashtie: Music Director, Anastasia Ashley: Surfer, Danielle Bernstein: Fashion Blogger.


We brought ZICO Coconut Water's #CrackLifeOpen campaign to life on social media by isolating insights from millennials, which brought a refreshing, light-hearted tone to all ZICO social properties. Recognizing the millennials desire to be healthy (but aversion to being told what to do), we strategically developed creative visuals with subtle, yet rich messaging.

By integrating the brand's celebrity ambassador, Jessica Alba, we launched the #CrackLifeOpen campaign on social media, and utilized Jessica's massive audience to generate awareness and follower conversion.

-Achieved over 189 million total impressions, 255K total engagements (Likes, Comments, & Hashtag Uses), and over 88K new followers across all ZICO brand channels within one year

-#CrackLifeOpen received approximately 92 million impressions on Instagram alone

-Reached over 4 million users on Facebook


For AmfAR – The Foundation for AIDS Research - we aimed to translate the organization's offline success online by turning a series of small, celebrity-studded private events, into social media experiences for millions worldwide. By focusing on securing social media support from celebrity attendees, and leading a live growth and content strategy, we were able to maximize conversion of celebrity followers to amfAR social channels.

At each event, we managed live content creation and publication of event sponsors such as Microsoft and Mercedes Benz, ensuring social media exposure for amfAR's valuable partners.

By executing unique opportunities to increase awareness – through a takeover of facebook.com/celebs, the launch of auctioned artist Damien Hirst's Instagram channel, and multiple influencer collaborations, we were able to achieve massive success over the course of three one-night events.

-1.9 billion impressions across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

-420k engagements (likes, comments and shares) across all channels

-28k followers gained through non-paid media

Media

Video for The 88

Entrant Company / Organization Name

The 88

Links