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Winner

Discomfort Future

The Economist and Sense London

Rather than shy away from the fact that The Economist is not for everyone, the newspaper embraced this thinking as its main selling point, creating a campaign targeting those who are open-minded and would react positively to unusual situations.

The "Discomfort future" campaign focused on deliberately divisive experiences that might make some people uncomfortable, in the knowledge that one person’s discomfort would be another person’s intrigue. The theme was the future of the planet, mirroring the newspaper’s most stimulating content, with experiential bringing this to life.

Activations were inspired by articles from The Economist and included offering commuters ice cream and crepes enriched with insects, creating smoothies from food rejected by supermarkets and distributing coffee brewed with water fed directly from a portable toilet. The campaigns took place at various events, railway stations and on the streets of major UK cities.

Since August 2016, the campaign has delivered 25,500 subscriptions around the UK alongside positive shifts in brand perception statements. It is continuing this year under the "Feeding future" theme.

Highly Commended

For Game of Thrones (GOT) season 7, Sky wanted to exceed four million viewers for a single episode – something no Sky show had previously achieved. On the seventh season’s launch day, an experiential activation ran at King’s Cross station featuring a replica Iron Throne within a fully branded GOT backdrop. Members of the public could sit on the throne and be photographed, with resulting images displayed around King’s Cross. Throughout the day, official public announcements were voiced by a Jon Snow impersonator. In a media first, that day’s Evening Standard featured a cover wrap of translucent paper to create an ice effect, in keeping with the wider campaign creative. The first episode drew 4.7m viewers live and on-demand.

±±¾©Èü³µpk10: Game of Thrones, Season Seven Launch Experiential

Brand/advertiser: Sky Atlantic

Media agencies: MediaCom, Rapport and Exterion

Senior planner/strategist: Jon Goldsmith and Adelle Braybrook

Media/brand managers: Faye Jones and Lucy Johnstone