LONDON – Yext, Inc. (NYSE: YEXT), the Answers Company, has been announced as the winner of this year's "Most Innovative Campaign" for its work on the '1999 Big B Campaign" which shone a light on the outdated approach to keyword search for brands. Looking to award the most innovative campaigns of 2022, the award highlights Yext's achievements in delivering a campaign that drives clear evidence of innovation, effectiveness, and success.
The Effective Digital Marketing Awards recognises innovative digital marketing campaigns by a brand. The innovation can come in the form of the technology deployed, the targeting used or the strategy behind the campaign.
Creativity typically isn't the first word that comes to mind when you think of B2B campaigns, but Yext turned this stereotype on its head with an integrated '90s-themed brand campaign in 2021. With its powerhouse team of marketers, brand strategists and content creators, Yext combined humour and nostalgia to effectively convey the difference between search technologies and raise awareness about a problem that people experience daily — in a way that's fun, enjoyable, and relatable.
From April to June, Yext saw a 40.48% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) increase in direct traffic to its homepage and experienced a 32.68% QoQ increase in new visitors. In the UK, the launch of the campaign in The Sunday Times Report was read by 1.7M people and caused an increase of 82% for the Yext website, with 37 scans and 1 demo request.
Commenting on the news, Nico Beukes, Managing Director, said "being recognised for our 1999 campaign is a true testament to the team's strategic and creative thinking—finding a way to balance the importance of enterprise search with the '90s nostalgia. I hope that this novel approach will pave the way for even greater campaign work internally, but also encourage other companies to rethink how they tell their brand stories."
Yext's goal was to raise awareness, not only about the real problem of businesses using outdated technology but also about Yext as the pioneering software company solving this problem with AI-powered search. Globally, the campaign included a TV commercial, a comprehensive landing page, additional video content, '90s-themed desk drops, and more.
The Effective Digital Marketing Awards have a strong emphasis on effectiveness, so the winners are typically campaigns and solutions where solid evidence of success is a key component of the entry. All winners have been announced as of the 8thof July and you can see thishere.