Last Friday, April 24, PRISM took to Zoom once again for a virtual tour of two Washington, D.C. agencies!
AKQA
The first stop on our “visit” was AKQA, an innovation and experience design agency located in D.C.’s Georgetown area. With headquarters in London and 30 studios across 26 cities around the world, AKQA is a leading agency in the business of mixing creativity with technology. Clients of the D.C. studio include AARP, PlayStation, Verizon, Bethesda, Delta and Optum.
Our discussion was led by two proud Hokie alumni, Blair Purdy and Adam Abbruzzese.
Blair served as co-CMO of PRISM for the 2016-2017 school year and landed a production internship with AKQA before accepting a full time position. She now works as an Associate Strategist primarily on the AARP account. We enjoyed learning from Blair about the structure of AKQA, internship programs, strategy and the setup of the D.C. office.
“We exist to create a better future with our clients,” she explained when talking about the company’s mission.
While Adam was attending Virginia Tech, he was a student in Professor Wertalik’s class. He began working for AKQA in 2012 and quickly realized there was an exciting opportunity to use his lifelong love for video games as part of his career. Adam now works primarily on PlayStation and Bethesda, and presented us with an engaging case study about several game promotions.
Verizon has reported a 75% increase in gaming traffic since the Covid-19 outbreak became widespread in the U.S. This isn’t too surprising since extra time spent at home now means more time to play video games. The $60 billion industry is more than just a source of entertainment for hardcore gamers and AKQA uses that knowledge to tell video games’ stories in unique and intriguing ways. One example is the release of a game called Death Stranding. To drum up anticipation, the plan was to reveal only small bits of the trailer at a time on the video game streaming site Twitch. Since the game storyline was brand new, gamers were anxious to find out more about this upcoming game release to get to know the scenario and the characters. The only way to “unlock” more of the trailer was to get more viewers to join the live stream. This campaign was wildly successful as viewers continued to pour in to reveal the full length trailer.
AKQA also played a key role in developing the tagline “Be Greater” and the TV spot for the Spiderman video game.
HUGE
Next up in our virtual visit lineup was Huge, a global network of over 1,200 talented people across 13 offices worldwide.
Director of Talent J.D. Slaughter got the ball rolling by explaining Huge’s mission statement, vision, “north star” and culture.
“Outside of working really hard, we also have a really good time,” he said. “We believe the perks of a job are necessary to the cultivation of a really enjoyable culture where all employees feel like they can be their whole selves. In order for us to get to the best ideas and make those diverse connections, people have to be comfortable with each other.
Project Manager Arista Ware took over from there to give us the rundown on some of their major clients and campaigns. Since 2015, Huge has worked with Airheads to produce 32 commercials and 7 new product launches along with hundreds of social media posts.
“Our team’s job is really to tailor everything to make our clients have that custom feel to really stand out amongst the masses,” she said.
Some of the ways Huge has done that for Airheads include:
Creating a font that resembles an inflated balloon to replicate their mascot, a red balloon named Oscar
Helping them write and own the tagline “Play Delicious”
Making a Snapchat lens that turns the user’s tongue into a rainbow Airheads belt
Another unique element they were able to bring to the table for Airheads was an organic partnership with New Orleans Saints running back Alvin Kamara. When they noticed Kamara was eating Airheads and handing them out to his teammates during games, they sent him a giant gift package filled with the candy and asked him to be their brand ambassador. Since he was already a huge fan of Airheads he was thrilled to do it and helped create a video series called “Play by Play” which combined football plays with Airheads’ play-themed tagline.
Senior Copywriter Scott Muska added that a big factor in the success of their work with Airheads, and with any client for that matter, is the focus on feelings rather than the products themselves.
“That’s important in advertising — to kind of cognitively associate a brand with a feeling or an emotion or an action. The worst creative you’ll ever see is when people are just trying to bash you over the head with selling a product, like the cable TV commercials you see and you don’t really want that. By establishing Airheads as a brand that people associate with play, it becomes something. We’re trying to sell a feeling and a mindset so that’s something that we, the creative team, always keeps in mind.”
The team went on to tell us about a pro-bono campaign in which they joined forces with PERIOD., a non-profit dedicated to promoting period equality by providing free menstrual products to those in need. This fascinating campaign took a disruptive approach that proved to be very successful. They posed the question: “What if men had to pay for toilet paper?” to demonstrate the struggle many women face when they have to pay for tampons in public restrooms. A toilet paper dispenser was designed that would only work if the user paid in quarters or tweeted using #FreeThePeriod. Men’s reactions to the dispenser were filmed and the result was an eye-opening, and kind of hilarious, video that creatively displayed the problem of period inequality.
Clearly this virtual trip to Washington, D.C. was a successful one as PRISM was still able to spend the entire day soaking up exciting content and insights from two impressive agencies. Thank you to AKQA and Huge for taking the time to share your ideas and passions with us!