Each year at the American Advertising Awards celebration, everyone from the best-known firms to the smallest two-person shops pitches their creative work into the talent pool to see which entries are declared unsinkable.

Despite this event being produced and attended by some of the most talented creative thinkers in our city, somehow, over the years, tedium has crept into the building. Cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, a pre-recorded announcement of winners – insert occasional celebratory roar here – and thanks for coming, folks. We’ll see you next year. This event shouldn’t feel like a chamber mixer. It should reflect the talent and inventiveness of its members.

When it came time for Alcorn to lead the creative charge, we decided it was time to go back to the drawing board. Our goal was to create a fully immersive experience: an event that celebrates the pain of creation along with the joy of getting it right – even as it reminds us why we work so hard to do what we do.

Rather than falling back on the rinse-and-repeat format because it’s the easiest, quickest or cheapest way, we started from a problem-solving mindset. Beginning by applying business logic to the strategy, just as any agency would do at the start of concept development, we built out each layer of the event with intention.

We knew interest and participation in American Advertising Federation was on the decline so, to stoke interest from newcomers and a few long-absent entrants, we offered a special reduced-rate entry + ticket offer to bring them into the fold. Attracting a new audience would refresh the energy at AAA, and hopefully their participation would spill over into other AAF events. Two business goals were achieved in one offer.

The budget for the gala was limiting, especially when aiming to reimagine the event. We expanded our resources by increasing sponsorship opportunities, adding new experiential layers and monetizing certain aspects of the awards event. For instance, we removed overpriced items that didn’t add anything to the experience and replaced them with extra features (like VIP tables) for event supporters possessing more flexible wallets.

Another challenge was that, over time, attendees lost sight of the creative work as central to the event, viewing the evening instead as the industry’s annual party. And, as a result, the creatives also had come to devalue the event over time. Perhaps it’s because the Bronze and Silver honorees seem to receive equal attention alongside the Gold and Best In Category winners. This isn’t T-ball but, rather, the majors. So we need to honor our All-Stars accordingly.

We learned many things from our hosting role and, through experiment, found there were a few details that drew favorable feedback and got people’s attention on the night of the gala:

• Hosting at a new venue – an empty warehouse turned exhibit space – brought a fresh appreciation for the immersive concept;
• Controlling access to the experiential spaces was effective at putting the focus back on the art/creative;
• Displaying the artistic/creative pieces in a new way drew greater attention and invited attendees to “get closer” to the work; and
• By placing the most emphasis on the top awards, thereby adjusting the amount of time and attention spent on the other honorees, we were able to recapture our audience’s attention at the most important phase of the evening.

It was exhausting. We pushed ourselves creatively and physically much further than we thought we could, we asked the client to try new things and extend more trust than ever before, we forged new relationships and called in favors from everyone we knew could contribute. In the end, the experience we created worked. We broke the broken model and created a new experience that each person in the room won’t soon forget.