Digital Agency of the Decade: R/GA
R/GA founder and CEO Bob Greenberg has a fortune-teller’s knack for seeing what’s around the corner. R/GA has been at the forefront of the top developments in interactive marketing and, along the way, has developed an agency model melding creativity and technology that’s the envy of the industry. Greenberg saw long before others that digital technology would change the relationship between consumers and brands by shifting the focus from what brands said to what they did. That afforded consumers the opportunity to directly experience a brand’s promise and share it with others. This resulted in a series of R/GA-led breakthroughs, starting with NikeID, an application that let users design their own shoes, and stretching through Nike Plus, the runningand- music platform that became an industry touchstone for the promise of combining marketing and product. Its standout work has enabled R/GA to win Adweek Digital Agency of the Year honors four times and admiration throughout the industry for its tech acumen in the service of creativity.
Digital Campaign of the Decade: Nike+
If there was a knock against Nike Plus from the ad world, it was what it wasn’t: an ad. Which was, of course, the point. Created in 2006, it defined how a brand can build a self-sustaining platform by giving customers an easy tool—a chip in their shoe that connects to their iPod music player—to track and share their training progress. Nike Plus takes “Just do it” and actually helps runners get it done. Since its launch, Nike Plus runners have logged more than 100 million miles—enough for more than 400 roundtrips to the moon. It’s little coincidence that Nike steadily increased its running shoe market share from 48 percent in 2006 to 61 percent in 2008. Along the way it created something for brands to aspire to: a product experience that reinforces the brand message.