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Ad Council
The Challenge
The Big Ad Gig 2010
In 2009, with both the economic downturn and advertising industry outlook at its worst, Atmosphere wanted to create the one thing that aspiring creatives needed most: jobs. Our solution was an online talent competition that would bring hungry writers and art directors to New York to compete in front of a live audience and panel of agency luminaries for the right to produce a public service campaign and land actual staff positions in leading creative departments. We pitched the idea to the Ad Council, the New York Times and a host of agency partners, who all rallied behind the cause, resulting in the inaugural Big Ad Gig competition in September 2009. As planning began for the 2nd annual event, we challenged ourselves to add more agencies, more job opportunities and an even more creative assignment. But with absolutely no paid media dollars to get the word out, we needed to get creative ourselves.
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Ad Council
The Solution
The Big Ad Gig 2010
To make The Big Ad Gig as big as possible (and the choosing of finalists as entertaining as possible), we leveraged our most powerful viral asset: we turned our judges into actual downloadable content. In other words, before our contestants could work for Andreas Combuechen, Andrew Keller, Tham Khai Meng, Jimmy Smith or Ty Montague, they first had to make these industry luminaries work for them — by seamlessly incorporating any of our cryptic video clips starring these creative directors into a compelling viral piece. To issue the challenge, an integrated grass-roots marketing campaign was employed via Twitter, Facebook, industry press, ad school posters and email blasts. And to give our contestants’ video submissions every opportunity to impress the ad world, we enabled the casting of votes through the simple click of the “Like” button, seamlessly distributing videos and contest branding throughout the Facebook community.
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Ad Council
The Results
The Big Ad Gig 2010
Online portfolios, resumés and video submissions poured in from Asia, South America and all across the U.S., culminating with nine finalists traveling to Times Square for a standing-room-only, Stuart Elliot-hosted Advertising Week event on September 8, 2010. Five jobs were awarded, and Microsoft donated a combined $1 million in ad space to run the winning Ad Council campaign across online, mobile and gaming channels. But the true measure of the Big Ad Gig was the impact it had on people’s lives. To date, six finalists have full time creative department positions and eleven others have been freelancing in agencies around the country.
