AKA Picks Up 8 Wins at the 14th Annual Davey Awards

AKA NYC, the integrated advertising agency specializing in live experiences, is celebrating its recent victories at the 14th Annual Davey Awards. Among eight honors, it received the Gold for Best User Experience for the interactive mobile guide to The New York Botanical Garden's exhibition, Georgia O'Keeffe: Visions of Hawai'i.

With 3,000 entries from around the globe, the Davey Awards honors the big ideas from the best creative minds in media, advertising and marketing. This year, along with the Botanical Garden's mobile guide, the Daveys recognized AKA NYC's creative content campaigns for the Broadway musical A Bronx Tale and the 2018 Tony Award®-winning Best Musical The Band's Visit.

The recognition for the mobile experiential initiative is a coup for AKA NYC, as it occurs almost exactly a year after the agency officially expanded its full service offerings to include a dedicated experiential arm.

"As we've seen over the last 12 months, experiential marketing strengthens your ties to your core audience while cultivating new audiences quickly," says Amanda Blackman, senior vice president of experiential at AKA NYC. "It is proven to generate awareness, loyalty and sales much faster than traditional advertising."

Experiences also resonate more deeply when shaped by users themselves. This fact drove AKA's creation of the mobile guide, which was made possible with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies. The mobile guide allowed users to explore firsthand the wonders of Hawai'i that inspired O'Keeffe's paintings including images of specific plants, the artist's own snapshots and sketches, and 360-degree videos shot on location by the award-winning AKA content and digital teams. Advanced location-aware technology helped users engage with content automatically and navigate the Botanical Gardens' grounds. This technology also allowed participants to create their own digital souvenirs and share them on social media, extending and enriching their experience.

"Meaningful audience engagement is a cornerstone of our approach and is evident in all the work we produce," says Elizabeth Furze, managing partner at AKA NYC. "We put the audience first and create advertising that is entertaining at its core."

Adds Scott Moore, managing partner at AKA NYC, "No matter the platform, we deliver campaigns that audiences actually seek out, enjoy and share."

To that end, the television and digital content for A Bronx Tale and The Band's Visit was created to address the needs of specific audiences.

Audience data for A Bronx Tale indicated a significant portion of fans were non-traditional theatregoers who required a deeper level of incentive and education. In response, AKA NYC created a TV and online campaign in which Robert De Niro and Chazz Palminteri prepared audiences for the full Broadway experience, from learning about the production to purchasing tickets.

The Band's Visit, winner of 10 Tony Awards in 2018, has both a story and a score that are unlike anything else currently on Broadway. This necessitated a campaign that evoked the emotion of the show, and the TV spot was central to this messaging. By showing audiences the musical's unique world, it primed them to embrace (and feel) something different.

The Davey Awards are sanctioned and judged by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts, an invitation-only body consisting of top-tier professionals from a "Who's Who" of acclaimed media, advertising and marketing firms. For a full list of 2018 Davey Awards winners, visit https://www.daveyawards.com/winners/winners/.

For more examples of AKA NYC's work, visit https://aka.nyc/work/.

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