Revealed: The Drum Awards for Marketing Americas winners 2023

By Thomas O'Neill, Managing editor

June 14, 2023 | 8 min read

Manifest has been named Agency Team of the Year, Invnt’s Kristina McCoobery is our Agency Leader of the Year and Brand of the Year goes to Netflix and Doritos.

Check out all of today’s winners below

Winners of The Drum Awards for Marketing Americas 2023 were revealed in a show broadcast on The Drum TV earlier today (June 14).

Rewarding the most effective marketing campaigns, companies and people in the Americas, the awards scheme focuses on outcomes, not outputs, and is open to teams of any size who can prove their campaigns have had a measurable effect.

Taking home the Grand Prix this year, as well as winning in the Partnership/Collaboration and the Content categories, are Observatory and Slap Global for their work with Doritos and Netflix. The collaboration looked to ensure that Doritos remained relevant in pop culture while simultaneously getting fans excited for the fourth season of the streaming platform’s Stranger Things. The result was a first-of-its-kind virtual concert, Live from the Upside Down, that used a Doritos bag as a ticket for a 1986 music festival within the mysterious alternate dimension from the sci-fi show.

The concert was marketed like any other, with artist promos, press interviews, line-up posters, and digital integrations. The 34-minute live stream featured iconic 80s hits and Stranger Things special effects, making it appear the bands were playing Live from the Upside Down. The collaboration racked up 300m views, with more than 365,000 concert invite scans and over 22,500+ YouTube Live chat messages. Doritos and Netflix were also awarded the Brand of the Year accolade.

Chair of the judges, Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing and communications officer at Mastercard, meanwhile handed his Chair Award to DDB Chicago for its work with Coors Light. Its ‘Made to Chill’ initiative provides a creative solution to rising temperatures exacerbated by inequality, painting billboards that can only be seen from the air on roofs in low-income neighborhoods using a special white paint that reflects sunlight, actively helping to reduce temperatures in target consumers’ living spaces.

The innovative out-of-home concept was piloted in Miami, Florida and used a custom dynamic typeface that was adapted to each roof to ensure maximum coverage and legibility. The activation achieved a 50°F (28°C) reduction in roof surface temperature, a 10°F (6°C) temperature difference inside buildings and a 20% decrease in air conditioning costs.

Rajamannar was joined on the judging panel this year by amazing marketers from brands including Heinz, Verizon, Danone, Chipotle and American Express.

The Drum Awards for Marketing Americas is the second part of a three-legged celebration of global marketing that will culminate with the EMEA ceremony on June 21. If you missed the APAC show, you can recap the winners and all of the action now.

Check out all of today’s winners below and head to The Drum Awards for Marketing Americas homepage for more information about the awards scheme.