Last year, it was a bit of a struggle to honor innovative and breakthrough IRL campaigns, given that the world was still largely hunkered down during the pandemic. But for our fourth annual Experiential Awards, there was no shortage of outstanding activations to highlight as consumers began to adapt to the new normal—and were champing at the bit to once again embrace out-of-home offerings.
This year’s impressive roster of winners includes everything from a pizza shop that simulated the effects of gerrymandering to shoelaces that smelled like cooked bacon to an interactive AR version of Pac-Man on pizza boxes. Here are the brands and campaigns that more than met the challenge of making their mark in a forever-changed world.
productionglue (A TAIT Company)
Client: MDLBEAST
Adweek Experiential Winner
Best International Experiential Activation
With the MDLBeast Soundstorm music festival, MDLBeast transformed a remote landscape in Saudi Arabia into a concert village that broke two Guinness world records: the tallest stage and the largest LED screen with the most LEDs on display. Creating this groundbreaking festival meant featuring more than 200 artists across four days on seven stages, each accommodating tens of thousands of people. The festival not only broke global festival numbers, with more than 732,000 visitors, but the experience was also featured in The Wall Street Journal, Harper’s Bazaar, Bloomberg, Cosmopolitan and Condé Nast publications for pulling off a never-before-seen immersive experience of this scale. —K.C.
Thinkwell Group (A TAIT Company)
Client: Warner Bros. Themed Entertainment
Partners: Fever + Unify
Adweek Experiential Winner
Best Experiential Activation by an Entertainment Brand
Inspired by the Forbidden Forest in the Harry Potter franchise and set in the woodland at Arley Hall and Gardens in Cheshire, U.K., this experience offered fans an opportunity to stroll along an interactive light trail with creatures from the series and in-universe references along the way. Set pieces, lighting effects and integrated projections combined to bring the forest to life, running nightly from Oct. 16, 2021-Jan. 16, 2022 and selling more than 200,000 tickets. Not stopping there, the team behind the project worked to create plans for future events, with six new locations set to debut in France, Germany, England and the U.S. in 2022. —S.C.