SYRACUSE, N.Y.—May 2, 2022—Mower, one of the country’s top independent marketing, advertising and public relations agencies, has been selected as a finalist in 15 Association of National Advertisers (ANA) B2 Award categories. The Mower finalists include several client campaigns and internal agency promotions, along with the prestigious top award, B2B Midsize Agency of the Year.
The B2 Awards celebrate the best in modern B2B thinking, reflecting the rich diversity of the advertising industry and the growing role of B2B marketing. B2 Award judges are B2B professionals from various divisions of the ANA, led by client-side executive marketers who are assigned to judge entries from the categories in which they have expertise.
The winners will be announced at the B2 Awards Gala on May 23 during the ANA Masters of B2B Marketing Conference in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Mower’s shortlisted work includes:
Client: ABB
Creative Campaign: ABB eMine™
Category: Print Advertising (includes digital)
Mining is essential for a sustainable world, yet also accounts for up to seven percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. So, ABB has put its considerable experience and expertise to work transitioning mines from fossil fuel to all-electric and creating sustainable progress for today and future generations. Their purposeful solution—ABB Ability™ eMine—helps its mining customers reduce their carbon footprint by electrifying and automating their operations.
The goal of the campaign was to promote eMine™ as at the forefront of sustainable mine operations by building recognition with bold and powerful messages. Mower worked with ABB and used compelling stats to link electrifying the mine to improving the air, ocean, trees and arctic ice, driving the point home through provocative split-screen images that seamlessly combine two worlds: one from the world of mining, one from the world beyond.
Client: ABB
Creative Campaign: ABB Adaptive Execution™
Category: Print Advertising (incudes digital)
Projects in the energy industry are big and complicated, with multiple partners working independently, leading to cost overruns, schedule delays and undue stress. To address these issues, ABB developed a revolutionary end-to-end solution—ABB Adaptive Execution™—and challenged Mower with supporting the launch of the solution to engineers and project managers responsible for knitting together all the disparate parts of the process.
Mower realized that the five main attributes of the solution–vision, effectiveness, collaboration, agility and efficiency–all had exact parallels in the animal kingdom. The majesty of nature tells the story, and the campaign brought the idea to life with high impact, nature documentary-style videos teasing the launch of the solution, all telling the same story: to survive in today’s project management world, you must first learn to adapt.
Client: Mower
Creative Campaign: Making Fierce Friends
Categories: Agency Promotion, Corporate Identity Program, Corporate or Brand Website, Midsize B2B Agency of the Year
Human beings are more technologically connected than ever before—but feel more emotionally disconnected than ever. Brands are no different. In a now virtual-first work environment—where clients are hyper-focused on data and analytics—creating meaningful, empathetic connections with their customers becomes even harder. Our challenge was to both differentiate Mower as an agency uniquely positioned to harness the superior strength of emotional connections AND help clients understand that this lack of humanity—or disproportionate dependence on analytics—could be standing in the way of their business goals.
The mission became known as “Making Fierce Friends”, with the guiding principle that for brands to be relevant in today’s world, relationships matter. Creating these connections takes a unique approach, one that Mower has perfected (as much as relationship-building can ever be perfected), and we call it Brand as Friend®. We successfully transformed Mower’s brand identity, website, marketing materials, company culture, and our clients’ success.
Client: National Grid
Creative Campaign: More Opportunities in More Places
Categories: Demand Generation (Large Enterprise), Media Strategy
National Grid has aggressive goals for reducing energy consumption and costs for their business customers. To achieve these goals, they offer incentives and extensive energy efficiency measures for them to participate in. The challenge is that many businesses have limited capital and competing priorities that often trump energy efficiency upgrades. It was important for National Grid and Mower to show customers that the opportunities for energy efficiency were all right in front of them, and all around them.
The “More Opportunities in More Places” campaign juxtaposes industry-specific imagery, with unexpected, ambient messaging to bring energy efficiency benefits to life in familiar scenarios. The goal was to demonstrate to vastly different audiences that energy efficiency isn’t an expensive upgrade, but a key business advantage. By integrating this new creative into a proven media strategy and tactical mix, the campaign outperformed expectations and media benchmarks, driving nearly 800,000 visitors to our campaign landing page, including nearly 500,000 new users — an 87% increase year over year.
Client: Iroquois Healthcare Association
Creative Campaign: Caring Gene
Categories: Social Media, Integrated Marketing Program, Digital Marketing Tools and Programs
For years, New York State has had an aging population and has faced a critical shortage of healthcare workers. Over the last few years, the COVID-19 pandemic has made a difficult situation even more dire. Of course, healthcare work can be physically and mentally challenging—but it can also be uniquely rewarding. It takes a special type of person to succeed in these roles. For those who have an innate desire to help others—caring is their calling.
Mower identified this unique trait, dubbed “the Caring Gene.” Mower created a flash mob-style and Tik Tok- style creative campaign plus a lighthearted social quiz, to speak to a younger and more racially and ethnically diverse audience and help them find out if they were a perfect fit for the care industry. The campaign drove hundreds of prospective candidates to apply for caregiver and other roles at New York State nursing homes and home health providers.
Client: New York State Tourism Industry Association
Creative Campaign: Roam the Empire
Categories: Social Media, Sales Enablement Program, Pro Bono Campaign, Digital Marketing Tools and Programs
The pandemic was devastating for New York State’s tourism industry. To help the industry bounce back in 2021, Mower was tasked with bringing together NYSTIA’s highly-competitive members with a common rallying cry that encouraged New York State residents to vacation in their home state. Mower created a campaign celebrating everything that’s waiting to be explored in the Empire State. Tapping into the drive vacation trend, Mower created “Roam the Empire” to be a rallying cry for residents to celebrate, visit and support destinations and attractions in the Empire State.
The campaign included a branded logo to be used across all 11 regional tourism agencies, and a dedicated landing page on NYSTIA’s website where a robust, fully developed campaign toolkit gave the state’s tourism industry partners everything they needed: key messages, logos, branded digital and print assets in varying sizes, a templated news release, and links to custom ‘Roam The Empire’ Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts.
About The ANA
The mission of the Association of National Advertisers is to drive growth for marketing professionals, brands and businesses, the industry, and humanity. The ANA serves the marketing needs of 20,000 brands by leveraging the 12-point ANA Growth Agenda, which has been endorsed by the Global CMO Growth Council. The ANA’s membership consists of U.S. and international companies, including client-side marketers, nonprofits, fundraisers, and marketing solutions providers (data science and technology companies, ad agencies, publishers, media companies, suppliers, and vendors). The ANA creates Marketing Growth Champions by serving, educating, and advocating for more than 50,000 industry members that collectively invest more than $400 billion in marketing and advertising annually.
About Mower
Mower is a digitally integrated independent marketing, advertising and public relations agency with professional staff concentrated in New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Cincinnati, and Buffalo, Rochester, Albany and Syracuse, N.Y. Mower delivers strategic insights and counsel, digital solutions, smart creative and award-winning results to clients in a wide range of industries and service sectors. It has earned top industry accolades from Clio, Cannes and ANA B2 awards and is the only full-service agency ranked in Ad Age, B2B Marketing, PRWeek and Chief Marketer. Mower is part of two global agency networks—thenetworkone and IPREX—as well as the 4A’s.