OMMA Social Agency of the Year

When Brooklyn-based HUGE hired a managing director in November 2010 to start a London office, it took a giant leap of faith. It had zero business across the pond, and only one person to drum up any. By the time the office opened its doors in January 2011 it had doubled in size — to two employees, and zero business. 

Weeks later the fledgling office got its first assignment from Unilever and began an ascent that would take it to 11 accounts and 35 employees within 10 months. For huge chief executive Aaron Shapiro, landing that business “was the moment of the year.” But it was just the first of many to come — both abroad and at home — that made 2011 a banner year for huge.

First, it solidified its position as the industry’s top social strategist, taking its groundbreaking 2010 social marketing program, Pepsi Refresh, to a new level in 2011, adding more social sharing options and putting greater emphasis on content and users’ stories. The result? A 17 percent increase in time spent on the site, and a 30 percent hike in the number of monthly submissions of “Great Ideas” competing for $20 million in Pepsi grant money. The agency also expanded its work on other PepsiCo brands — completing digital strategy, design and development for Pepsi, Pepsi Max and Propel.

The main event for Target Stores was a Back-to-Campus Web campaign aimed at engaging college kids with shopping checklists, social media sharing and daily promotions. For Budweiser, it was a strategy to optimize the brand’s global Facebook presence for regional markets in their own languages. And for Svedka, it was a digital, social and public relations campaign supporting the brand’s summer Walk of Shame promotion. That campaign doubled overall Web and Facebook impressions, and increased the number of active users by 10,000 a month.