THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media and digital. View this season's finalists!

Industry

See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Auto See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Beauty See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Business to Business See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Consumer Brand See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Education See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Entertainment See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Financial Services See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Fitness, Health, & Wellness
<br>See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Food & Beverage
See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Gaming See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Government & Politics See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Hospitality See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Insurance See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Live Events See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> News & Media See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Non-Profit See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Pets & Animals See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Pharma & Healthcare See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Real Estate See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Restaurants See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Retail & E-Commerce See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Social Activism See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Sports See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Technology See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Television See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Travel & Tourism See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Wine, Beer & Spirits

Strategy & Engagement

See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Brand Partnership See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Call to Action See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Community Management See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Creative Use of Technology See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> CTV/OTT See previous winners and honorees for Insights and Trends here.</a> <a href=https://shortyawards.com/16th/"https://shortyawards.com/category/16th/data-visualization">See previous winners and honorees for Data Visualization here.</a>"> Data & Insights See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Earned Media See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Event & Experiential See previous winners and honorees here.</a>""> Gamification See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Humor See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Innovative Media Buying Strategy See previous winners and honorees here.</a>""> Integration with Traditional Media See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Internal Communications See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> LGBTQ Community Engagement See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Micro-Influencer Strategy See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Multicultural Community Engagement See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Music & Dance See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> On a Shoestring See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Organic Promotion See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Paid & Amplification See previous winner and honorees here.</a>"> Physical and Digital Convergence See previous winner and honorees here.</a>"> Public Service Announcement See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Real Time Response See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> SEO & SEM See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Social Commerce See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Storytelling
From the 16th Annual Shorty Awards

A Lenovo TrackPoint Halloween (2023)

Finalist in Medium-Length Video

Silver Honor in Animation

Objectives

Celebrating Halloween with an ambitious animated video has become essentially tradition for Lenovo’s social media team. Much like that “one neighbor” we all have every October (you know the one) – each year we strive to out-do our previous efforts, growing the scale and scope of our ideas. 

As our team sits within Lenovo’s corporate marketing group and has a fully in-house production team, we asked ourselves in 2023 – what’s next, and how can we do something bigger? Our answer was to grow our resources and our vision, and what better way to do that than to tell a full-on, jump-scare filled, spooky story? 

As with years before, this animation was designed to be a brand-level piece of content that could be shared internally company-wide and externally on our social media handles.  

Strategy and Execution

From the start we knew that our goal was to continue spotlighting the famed ThinkPad TrackPoint (the little red dot in the middle of our keyboards) – so we brainstormed new spooky settings and situations to place our little friend. Inevitably we concluded that our new story must begin with the classic framework of “It was a dark and stormy night…” integrating a “jump scare” narrative motif. 

We began with an establishing shot of a suburban household, at night, during a torrential rainstorm. Next, we transition into a shadowy childhood bedroom filled to the brim with dolls and other toys. With the return of the TrackPoint, we decided a group of them would “awaken” to play seasonal tricks on each other. Using a Motorola phone’s flashlight, they begin creating a series of creepy shadow puppets – a witch, a t-rex, and a pumpkin. Then suddenly, with a flash of lighting, an enormous ghostly monster appears, terrifying everybody involved. As it turns out, while our protagonists are distracted by their festivities, a rogue group of TrackPoints decided to capitalize on the moment – creating a scary seasonal shadow of their own on a nearby windowsill. Doubled over with laughter, they relish in their trickery…providing just enough of a distraction to introduce our final jump scare - a terrifying living doll, outside in the rain…right behind them! 

We knew accomplishing this vision would be no easy task, so we set out to answer 3 questions – What do we already do well? What else would we like to do? and What else is needed to realize that vision? For one, we know how talented our animators are, so we decided to build on that and grow their repertoire of tools and skills. Therefore, we invested in additional plug-ins (Such as X Particles for the rain) that would truly elevate the special effects within our 3D animation tools. 

Results

The response and performance this year were fantastic! We brought in 5.5 million impressions, 2.7 million engagements, and an engagement rate of 49.2% -- which was more than 4x the performance last year’s Halloween asset. 

With results this successful we knew that we made the right call to invest more into our in-house 3D animation capabilities. This also proved that longer form content can genuinely succeed on social media if the idea and execution is on-point, so we have doubled down on developing holiday content – with dedicated resources helping to source and ideate future creative. 

Media

Entrant Company / Organization Name

Lenovo

Link

Entry Credits