What does it take and how does it feel to win a Webby? An interview with one winner.
“The Internet’s highest honor,” the Webby is an award everyone in digital communications dreams about.
How does it feel to be chosen as a winner among more than 13,000 entries from 70 countries? We asked one lucky Webby owner about his experience. Meet Vlad Sitnikov, chief creative officer of Possible Group Moscow, who this year has snatched this trophy for the third time.
Two of your projects have been honored at the Webbys (Blind Project / 2012 and Adopt a Pack / 2019). How were they born? Were the ideas inspired by an incoming client brief? Or were they concepts born inside your agency just waiting for the right brand to bring it to life?
Blind Project was our own idea. We thought about something we’d never heard about — a “blind” website — and then we met a perfect client for this campaign, The Right to Smile. This foundation helps visually impaired children.
Adopt a Pack is another story. This campaign was solely created as a solution to our client’s brief, for Hill’s Pet Nutrition. Hill’s is supporting pet shelters and our challenge was to help them find new families for cats and dogs. And we used Telegram Messenger as key media, as it’s incredibly popular in Russia. As a result, around one hundred pets have found their homes now.
How many years had you been participating by the time you were first honored? Are newcomers really lucky or is it a matter of time and experience?
As far as I remember, we got our first award the second year. Then we only got honorable mentions until last year, when we got both judges’ award and People’s Voice Award with one project.
Do your clients pay attention to festivals? Have they ever come to you with a reference to winning campaigns demanding to “make it the same as…?”
Of course they care about such things. And yes, sometimes they want to re-create winning concepts in some way. Awarded campaigns inspire your own motivation. And the results they demonstrate make you believe that you can also succeed.
The Webbys are the only top-tier awards with People’s Voice nominations along with expert voting . You have won both of them — what is more precious for you?
Both are incredibly meaningful. We’ve never won People’s Voice and finally it happened this year.
Both of your winning campaigns have clear social cause targets along with business KPIs. Do you think that it’s impossible now to impress the judges with an idea that doesn’t use a brand as an activism platform?
No, I don’t think so. It may be hard to believe, but corporations realize that their consumers don’t engage into communication unless there’s some social impact in a brand’s activity. Responsible consumption and consciousness are determining factors now. I’m happy, as agencies now have an opportunity to achieve their ambitions to change life for the better with the help of brands, through the client briefs. Competition is strong among all the brilliant ideas, no matter if they are cause-related or not. The jury values and evaluates them all equally. And it fuels creativity.
The Webbys are also famous for their tradition of limiting the length of winners’ speeches to five words. Can you share with us your speech?
Stay foolish. Stay hungry.
The Spotlight Team
