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Sparks takes home the Ex Award for Best Trade Show Experience with the “Hey Google” Campaign at CES! Winners were announced live during a dinner gala often referred to as the event industry’s own “Golden Globes,” held on the first evening of the Experiential Marketing Summit, May 14, at the historic Warfield Theatre in San Francisco. Congratulations to the other nominees and to all nominees and winners of the 2018 Ex awards! BEST TRADE SHOW EXPERIENCE Ex Award Winner Client: Google Campaign: Hey Google @ CES Agency: Sparks Gold Winner Client: Ford Campaign: On-Road, Off-Road, On-Track Agency: Imagination Silver Winner Client: Siemens Campaign: IFA 2017 Agencies: Schmidhuber, Blackspace Full coverage of the 2018 Ex Awards program can be found on http://glassdoor.com/slink.htm?key=vQpjm.
The editors of Chief Marketer announce 2018 winners of The Chief Marketer 200 — the industry’s first and only comprehensive list of top non-advertising agencies. Sparks is proud to be included on this extraordinary list under the B-to-B Experiential Marketing category. What CM200 Says about Sparks “Boo-yah! The big league global agency is hitting its high score right now, with some of the biggest clients, biggest experiences and most awards around. The shop has 10 offices around the globe, staffed by 450+ professionals who execute 2,500 events each year. A three-day event for Google was turned into a Burning Man-style experience with 380 speakers, 190 sessions, 85 code labs, 18 product teams and musical performances from Charli XCX. An experience for headphone maker Monster at CES included a custom Bentley tricked out with a Monster sound system, creating big noise with electronics retailers. One of the only experiential partners that has it all in-house—strategy, design, fabrication, execution and measurement.”
Sparks Named Best Places to Work in Events Winners determined by employee responses to an Engagement Survey sent via Quantum Workplace. Sparks is ranked among the best! EM said: Ahhhh the mighty Sparks! It’s not the awards and clients that bring in the talent—it’s the talent that brings in the awards and clients. Ask the 450-plus Sparks employees and you’ll hear common words such as family, loyalty, trust, fairness, creativity, passion, teamwork. Ask any of the senior executives about their roster and they’ll tell you their people are everything, and nothing creates award-winning events and happy clients like happy people. Over the years this Top 100 It List agency and mega-Ex Award winner has gotten quite the reputation—for treating its people like rock stars with offices designed to promote collaboration, employee perks (cars washed at the office??), meetings held on rooftops, bowling holiday parties, food truck office breaks, and yes, those dog-friendly digs.
EMP Development. Sparks, a 2017 Best Places to Work winner, believes that learning and development are at the core of what high impact performing companies do; that furthering the professional and personal education of its employees leads to higher customer satisfaction, more innovation, and faster growth. To that point, the agency once again invested in its most valuable asset—its people—with a 2-day development course focused on body language and building rapport. The course, taught by New York Times Best Selling Author, body language expert, keynote speaker and regular media guest, Janine Driver, teaches a number of techniques that allow the student to establish trust with the people they work with and for by better understanding, reading and using body language. When asked why professional development is a key employee retainment strategy for Sparks, Chairman Jeffrey Harrow replied, “There is a lot of competition for top talent in our space. These are smart, creative people who are looking for growth and personal fulfillment opportunities in their work, not just a paycheck.”
Sparks Helps Marie Claire Launch NYC Pop-Up. Marie Claire magazine partnered with Mastercard to launch The Next Big Thing Concept Shop, a first-to-market, hands-on retail pop-up experience bringing to life the newest innovations in fashion, beauty, entertainment, technology and wellness. Open to the public, The Next Big Thing Concept Shop offered consumers the opportunity to experience a new way to shop, powered by Mastercard technology. The Sparks-designed retail destination brings the pages of Marie Claire to life with three main zones named after popular sections in the magazine, including @Work: the get-ahead guide to career, style and success, @Play: the go-to guide to going out, staying in and getting away and @Peak: the wellness resource for being on your game, in the zone and at your best. To learn more about The Next Big Thing Concept Shop, visit: http://glassdoor.com/slink.htm?key=vQRlv.
Sparks Partners with Red Cross for Hurricane Relief. Sparks partnered with the American Red Cross and Clean the World to provide hurricane relief to those affected, including victims of Hurricane Harvey and Irma. On Thursday, September 21st, Sparks’ local personnel, clients and friends came together at the Sparks’ NYC office to assemble 300 “comfort kits” for victims of hurricane disasters. These kits included basic hygiene products including washcloths, razors, lotion, shampoo and conditioner. If volunteers completed 300 kits, Sparks would match by shipping 3,000 more comfort kids to hurricane victims. Of course, we pulled through and we will be sending 3,300 kits to various Red Cross hurricane relief shelters throughout the southern states. This will provide some comfort for families struggling to meet their most basic needs.
Sparks Wins Biz Bash Top 100 Events. Sparks adds another award to their list. BizBash named Google I/O the Top 100 Events in the United States 2017. Rayna Katz reports for BizBash, “the events here all have something in common: They allowed event professionals to show off their creativity and bring people together. As with all lists, these are subjective. To choose and rank the annual events, we look at several factors, including economic impact, buzz, innovation, and an event’s prominence within the communities it intends to serve.” Google I/O is an annual developer conference held in San Francisco, CA. Artificial intelligence was the focal point at this year’s conference. Read more about the event and other winners here.
Sparks Produces Made with Code: Technovation Celebration. Made with Code, Google’s initiative to champion the next generation of female leaders and inspire them to see coding as a way to pursue their dreams, partnered with nonprofit Iridescent, to create the 2017 Technovation Challenge. Over 11,000 girls from 103 countries formed teams to develop apps and business plans addressing real-world problems in 6 categories: Poverty, Environment, Peace, Equality, Education and Health. The teams traveled to Google headquarters in California to present their ideas to a panel of experts and leaders in the tech industry. Sparks helped Made with Code create a fun, inviting event for the teen girls. There were many activities spread across Garfield Park; including yard games like corn hole and giant jenga, and emojify photo booths with fun hats and props. The event also had several trendy lounges with colorful décor for the girls to network and hang out.
Sparks Promotes Robin Lickliter to CXO. Sparks announced the promotion of Robin Lickliter to Chief Experience Officer (CXO). This makes Sparks one of the few male-owned brand experience agencies to have a woman in the C-suite. Formerly Senior Vice President of Events at Sparks, Robin will continue to lead the client services, operations and execution teams of the agency’s rapidly growing Event division. She is one of the most senior members of the company’s executive team, and has directly led or guided the production of award-winning events and experiences for key clients including Google, Budweiser and LEGO.
Sparks Makes Event Marketer’s Fab 50 List. Sparks was once again named in Event Marketer’s 2017 Fab 50 List. We are very proud to have been on this list for 5 consecutive years and hope to continue our streak. The Fab 50 is the first editorial listing of top fabrication partners as a guide, selected through a rigorous application and judging process that highlights the top 50 with profiles containing bite-sized stats and capabilities for each company. EM said: If volume rebates, exhibit refurbishment and $6 million worth of rental inventory gets you hot, then break out the bottle of Asti Spumante. Few fabricators have been doing it as long as, or as well as, this independent—which is why Sparks has one of the most fine-tuned exhibit arsenals in the biz, babe. Small displays to Tier 1 mega-experiences, rental to custom to hybrid rental/custom… all backed by some of the category’s biggest design, estimating and build benches.
