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Our Work
When the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team won the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2019, the biggest story wasn’t their unprecedented fourth title – it was that female soccer players were being paid 19 times less than their male counterparts.
While many attributed the pay discrepancy to gender discrimination, Budweiser and VaynerMedia dug deeper and found it was also driven by a massive gap in sponsorship. While Major League Soccer in America had 24 official sponsors, the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) had just three. As one of those three sponsors, Budweiser wanted to drive change. But in order to help close the pay gap it was crucial to address the sponsorship gap.
We launched the Future Officials of the NWSL, a campaign that didn’t just talk about the sponsorship gap, but instead actually filled it. As a result, the NWSL added six new sponsors (P&G, Secret Deodorant, CBS, Twitch, Google and Verizon) for their 2020 season and the NWSL announced an increase in their salary cap by almost 20%.
Entered Into
Glass: The Lion For Change
A01: Glass
SHORTLISTED
Direct
A01: Food & Drink
B05: Use of Print / Outdoor
D03: Use of Social Platforms
F07: Corporate Purpose & Social Responsibility
Entertainment
D01: Sports: Content
D02: Sports: Brand Integration & Sponsorships / Partnerships
Entertainment Lions for Sport
A03: Digital
C01: Fan Engagement
C02: Influencer & Co-creation
C03: Social
E01: Brand Integration & Sponsorships
E02: Brand Storytelling
E04: Partnerships with Sports Talent
E05: Sports for Good
E06: Diversity & Inclusion in Sport
Social & Influencer
B05: Brand Storytelling
B06: Innovative Use of Community
C02: Partnerships
E01: Multi-platform Social Campaign
E02: Sponsorship & Brand Partnership
E03: Social Purpose
F03: Single-market Campaign
F04: Social Behaviour
Sustainable Development Goals
A05: Gender Equality
Titanium
A01: Titanium
Planters
The Death of Mr. Peanut
VaynerMedia New York
To create the most talked-about Super Bowl commercial for Planters, we knew we had to enter the cultural zeitgeist leading up to the Big Game in ways that had never been done before.
By using our unique volume model, we had multiple learnings about Mr. Peanut that helped us understand his role in culture and, especially, how much people loved him. We also learned that cultural figures often had to die or disappear to remind fans of their dormant admiration. Given the love for Mr. Peanut, we believed we could tap into the cultural impact of a beloved character passing away, which would subsequently cause an outpouring of emotion, conversation, and togetherness from fans across the world.
Our campaign kicked off in January 2020 when Mr. Peanut went on the ultimate Super Bowl road trip with his celebrity friends Wesley Snipes and Matt Walsh, which ended in disaster with Mr. Peanut sacrificing himself to save his friends after a fiery NUTmobile crash. With an outpouring of love, fans rediscovered the importance of Planters’ iconic 104-year-old mascot.
During the Super Bowl, we broadcasted Mr. Peanut’s funeral, attended by several well-known brands. But most importantly for the brand, with 11.4 billion earned media impressions, three Saturday Night Live skits about Mr. Peanut and Baby Nut, two New Yorker cartoons, and 16 mentions on morning and late-night TV, we accomplished our goal of breaking into pop culture and getting people talking.
With everyone talking about the death of Mr. Peanut before the Big Game, we’d won the Super Bowl before it even began.
Entered Into
Creative Strategy
E03: Brand Strategy
B02: Community Management
C02: PR Effectiveness
F02: Challenger Brand
F08: Market Disruption
Social & Influencer
A01: Food & Drink
B01: Community Management
B02: Audience Targeting / Engagement Strategies
B05: Brand Storytelling
B06: Innovative Use of Community
TikTok
#SeaShanty
VaynerMedia London
When a TikTok sea shanty started to make waves in the mainstream, VaynerMedia London saw an opportunity to celebrate the moment and make our position and role in culture clear.
In December 2020, a postman called Nathan dropped an infamous sea shanty that echoed around the world gaining widespread press coverage and multiple mentions and collaborations from celebrities.
This is the story of how we, over a two-week period, leveraged the momentum of this viral hit and helped it reach the stratosphere through tactical content that started organically on our channels, was then amplified through paid social and finally transcended into a full-blown TV spot across prime-time television – creating possibly the fastest TV ad ever made in the process.
What started as a reactive piece of content for an emerging trend was turned into a cultural phenomenon that became the most successful campaign the TikTok UK team has ever seen, gaining over 30 million impressions, 3 million engagements and more than 4.6 billion views across the #SeaShanty videos from our community.
VaynerMedia London helped turn a humble Sea Shanty TikTok video into an official UK chart #1 hit (and series of NFTs), creating the most unexpected, but needed, trend to kick off 2021 – proving that it does indeed, ‘start on TikTok.’
Entered Into
B. Social Engagement & Influencer Marketing
B05 – Content discovery & amplification
Social
C02 – Realtime response
C05 – Social trends