The Webby Awards

2020 Webby Awards Case Study

Context

Create a digital campaign and show package for the 24th annual Webby Awards, setting an iconic, online stage for its first-ever Webbys From Home.

Strategy

Craft a suite of celebratory, endlessly-customizable assets that help elevate our post-quarantine realities, while celebrating the best of the Internet in a hyper-personalized, hyper-digital way.

Solution

In addition to its success as the most digital, accessible Webbys to date, the campaign helped mobilize millions to vote IRL, resulting in one of the biggest online registration rallies of 2020.

Creative Content

The show must go on...

Our campaign for the 24th annual Webby Awards started out with a normal brief. Then, a global pandemic happened. Working with the Webby’s super-talented team of creatives and strategists, we moved to execute the group’s first-ever all-digital awards show, coming up with a name, acronym, and attention-winning campaign concept that was designed to be easy to use, endlessly customizable, and instantly relatable to the hyper-reality of 2020.

Visual Identity

Introducing: The first-ever Webbys From Home.

Campaign visuals focus on elevating the mundane, giving the online awards show a classic red-carpet feeling with a twist of post-viral irony. A palette of white, black, and gold gives a Midas touch to the everyday objects that surround us in our new normal, from golden toilet paper rolls to glittering houseplants. Two bold, fashion-inspired typefaces from Commercial Type unify the design system.

Every asset we created, from a new logo to graphic assets, to custom social posts and toolkits were designed to help the Webbys get the word out, encourage people to vote, and celebrate the best of the internet in an eye-catching, totally of-the-era way.

Virtual Awards Show

Digitizing one of the internet’s biggest IRL celebrations.

Understanding the inherent limitations of online presentations, we set out to create a seamless, personalized, shareable awards show package that was 100% dedicated to showcasing the personality and talent of each and every winner.

Partnering with our friends at Youtoocanwoo on original music and sound design, we created a system of opens, title cards, in-show tributes, customizable speech toolkits, and more that brought the glitz and glamour home to everyone. The event, hosted by Patton Oswalt and “attended” by high-profile celebrity guests, from Michelle Obama to Deepak Chopra, expertly blended the intimacy of our collective at-home experience with the high-profile celebration its winners deserved, making it a Webbys to remember for years to come.

Campaign Extension

And the voting didn’t stop there...

This year, the Webbys wasn’t just about voting for online ingenuity, either. We also helped integrate a massive get-out-the-vote initiative as a core component of the campaign. After voting for the Webbys, our campaign pushed millions of people to register to vote IRL through an official partnership with vote.org, resulting in one of the biggest digital registration rallies of 2020.