4.2 Billion Social Media Impressions

3.6 Million Media Impressions

1.6 Million Video Streams

1,000+ Internet VIPs in attendance

#Webbys trended nationally

4.5 Billion Social Impressions

13 Million Page Views (+106%)

4 Million Unique Visitors (+82%)

2.5 Million Votes Cast (+25%)

650k Registered Voters (+20)

350k Newsletter Subscribers Added

For two weeks in April, the Online public cast their votes to decide who will win a People's Voice Webby. And over 700 Nominees rally their fans to help them. With no paid media, this campaign is driven 100% by the Nominee's and their fans. The site is deceptively simple and integrates a number of refined optimizations that lead to all-time high engagement. More than 750 of the biggest brands, publishers, content creators, influencers, and celebrities compete in the Webby People’s Voice. The Webby People’s Voice experience enjoys a highly invested level of engagement with Webby Nominees and fans alike.

A simple, uncluttered layout is a large part of the campaign's success. There are many tiny features which may seem minor but lead to large increases. Like instant standings after a vote is cast, dynamic content in all social shares to alleviate spam, and personalized emails to voters with updates on how their Nominee is faring with a personalized CTA to share. And for the Nominees, we created a mobile-optimized resource center which provides real-time standing updates for all Nominees from you organization so they can obsessively check their status any time of day.

To kick off the 20th Anniversary season, The Webbys wanted to let the world know about this milestone. But we didn't want to sound braggy. So we contacted some of the biggest Webby winners and gave them a simple brief: Design a poster inspired by the phrase "The Internet Can't Be Stopped." We assured them there would be no notes. We'll run what you send. And we did. The work of these incredible organizations formed the backbone of our 6 month Call for Entry campaign. Oh, and the co-founder of the Internet (yeah, like the actual Internet) was into the idea as well. He wrote a personal essay on how "The Internet Can't Be Stopped" as a call to arms for our community to create amazing work online.

20 Week Campaign

20 agencies and organizations

For each week of the Call for Entry period, we had each organization's Call for Entry design brand our online identity. We ran an editorial feature with each company's senior creative lead on the direction for their piece. And each week culminated in the organization taking over The Webby Awards social media account to expand their interpretation of "The Internet Can't Be Stopped."

Google chose to highlight some of the year-defining online moments through an illustration series that was both simple and powerful.

After writing a well-researched, profane, and earnest long-form copy ad on the history of the internet, the team at Wieden+Kennedy realized no one saves their notes. So they enlisted 2 interns to track down a link to every example. The team opened a Google doc and asked The Webby community for help. Their progress was streamed live on Periscope. After about 5 hours, they completed the task. Their results can be seen here: http://bit.ly/2lihVSR 

LDC took control of The Webby social channels and asked "Why the internet can't be stopped?" to some Brazilians to give our audience a Latin American perspective to the campaign. Not limited to tech people, they spoke to an author, a chef, a designer, and activist, and some soccer player name Neymar Jr. You can see here: http://bit.ly/2lYKLra

Droga5 harnessed the power of the INTERNet to offer their creative services to Webby Twitter followers and livestreaming the process on Periscope. From offering up UX advice, researching lunch spots, and designing cover photos, our feed keep the team busy. David Droga saw the results and decided to stop by to check it out.