Duolingo, e.l.f., Netflix, 72andSunny, Whalar and More Are Up for a Shorty
New York, April 16, 2025 - The Shorty Awards, the premier awards program honoring the most innovative work across digital and social media, announced the finalists for its 17th annual season today.
With "Break the Rules" as this year’s theme, the entries showed a clear shift in how brands, agencies and creators approached digital storytelling. New voices, platform-native styles, and creative choices were tested to make campaigns more direct, personal, and less filtered. The most outstanding entries moved away from formulaic formats and intentionally embraced braver ideas. This shift reflected a broader push to rethink the potential of human creativity.
“When we set this season’s theme, our goal was to rewrite the playbook,” said Junmian Sun, Managing Director of the Shorty Awards. “As an industry, we’ve always celebrated originality but found it increasingly bogged down by optimizing for algorithms. This year, we challenge the Shorty community to break away from following the 'best practices' and boldly go after the best outcome. We saw brands and creators take bigger risks, less polish, more punch, which is the kind of work that sparks greater cultural moments.”
The most nominated organizations this year include Loop, MTV Entertainment, Code & Theory, Google, The Kitchen - Kraft Heinz in-house agency and more. View the full list of finalists here.
Finalists and winners are selected by the Real Time Academy, a judging body made up of industry leaders from top-tier brands and organizations including Bumble, VML, Google, Warner Bros, Edelman, Meta, Ben & Jerry's, and more.
“Being part of the judge/jury process across such a comprehensive range of categories was almost a form of professional education," said Mark Schroffner, EVP of Growth at The Media Image. "It really opened my mind to what’s possible, what the full spectrum of campaigns/activations look like outside the range of my own agency, especially as we look to build capabilities into 2026. For some of the entries I opted to reward ‘guts’ a little in the scoring, as well as scale and complexity.”
“It was inspiring to see how much great storytelling is evolving across the landscape,” said Joanna Cohen, SVP of Strategy at Publicis Groupe.
Winners will be announced at the 17th Annual Shorty Awards live show on May 21, 2025, in New York City. More information about the live show can be found here.
Press Contact:
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About The Shorty Awards:
The Shorty Awards (also known as “The Shortys”) honor the most innovative work in digital and social media, by organizations in all sectors and sizes, as well as individual creatives and creators from around the world.
Founded in 2008, the Shortys’ mission is to celebrate, inspire and push the boundaries of excellence in digital storytelling. Entries are judged on the merits of creativity, strategy, and engagement by the Real Time Academy, a body of hand-selected industry experts and leaders.
The public can also select their favorite Shorty Awards contenders during Audience Honor voting. Notable winners include brands, agencies, nonprofits, media, and production companies such as Airbnb, Marvel Studios, HBO, HRC, UNICEF, Nestle, BMW, Paramount+, Digitas, Wieden + Kennedy, 72andSunny etc, as well as influential artists, scientists, authors, and activists such as Greta Thunberg, Bill Nye, Michelle Obama, Trevor Noah, Taylor Swift, Malala Yousafzai, Conan O’Brien, Lady Gaga and more.
Currently, the Shortys have two annual competitions, the flagship Shorty Awards and Shorty Impact Awards dedicated to honoring the best work with a positive social impact.
