Markham Yard Sweeps 2023 Miami ADDY Awards

markham-yard-2023-ADDY
markham-yard-2023-ADDY

Markham Yard Sweeps 2023 Miami ADDY Awards

Agency obtains 16 ADDYs, including three Best of Show awards.

MIAMI, FL, MARCH 24, 2023: The American Advertising Federation hosted its annual Miami ADDY Awards last week at The Anderson, enjoying a three-hour presentation filled with snacks, jazz, and the best of the best in the South Florida advertising community.

As the night progressed, one thing was clear: Markham Yard emerged victorious.

Presented 16 individual awards, including three Best of Show categories, eleven Silver ADDYs, one Honorable Mention and one Special Merit, the Markham Yard team took home more awards (including the most top awards) than anyone else this year.

“So proud of our team, for being recognized by the AAF for our work at the 2023 ADDYS last night. And thank you to the local ad community for coming together once more to remind us what ‘community’ can mean.” said Markham Cronin, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Markham Yard.

“Thank you to our team for your passion and energy. Thank you to our clients and partners who recognize that to do something extraordinary, we need to trust the process and each other, and be open to the unexpected, the unprecedented, the new.

We celebrate this moment. And then we tear off the rearview mirror, because what is behind us, is behind us. The things in front of us are where we are focused.”

Awards include: 

BEST OF SHOW, PUBLIC SERVICE: 

“Save The Slime” Campaign, Bonefish and Tarpon Trust

BEST OF SHOW, PRINT:

“Serious Stories, Chapter 2” Campaign, Invincible Boats

BEST OF SHOW, ONLINE/INTERACTIVE:

“You Don’t Have to Be Good” Campaign, New York Blood Center Enterprise.

HONORABLE MENTION, CROSS PLATFORM:

“Save the Slime” Release Campaign, Bonefish and Tarpon Trust

MERIT IN ILLUSTRATION/PACKAGING:

Don Q Packaging, Don Q Rum

SILVER WINNERS:

“10 Items or Less” Digital Video, NYBCe

“Blood Drop” Digital Video, NYBCe

“Blood Drop” TV, NYBCe

Don Q Cocktail Packaging, Don Q Rum

“Eating In Bed” Digital Video, NYBCe

“Greater Lengths” Spread, Yellowfin
“Save the Slime” Release Campaign (Public Service), Bonefish and Tarpon Trust

“Save the Slime” Release Campaign (Social Media), Bonefish Tarpon and Trust

“Save the Slime” Release Campaign (Integrated Advertising), Bonefish Tarpon and Trust 

“Serious Stories, Chapter Two” Campaign, Invincible Boats

“You Don’t Have To Be Good” Digital Video Campaign, NYBCe

INQUIRIES:

Markham Cronin: mcronin@markhamyard.com

ABOUT MARKHAM YARD, LLC:

Established in 2005, Miami-based, Markham Yard (MarkhamYard.com) is a full service advertising agency offering big brand thinking, strategy, design and creative in a concentrated form for both local and international clients. With eighteen years of experience with global clients across an array of industries, Markham Yard offers the creative power of big agencies in a streamlined and nimble form. Clients include: BurgerFi,  Children’s Hospital of Richmond Foundation, Anna Griffin, Boyne Capital, Liebherr, Captains for Clean Water City National Bank Hell’s Bay Boatworks, IT’SUGAR, The New York Blood Center Enterprise, Invincible Boats , Bonefish & Tarpon Trust, the Miami Herbert Business School, Breakthrough Miami, Herman Lucerne Memorial Foundation, and Yellowfin.

Welcome to Markham Yard.

markham yard logo on building
markham yard logo on building

Welcome to Markham Yard.

A yard is where things are dreamt up, planned, designed and built. Where ideas are translated into craftsmanship. Where things are cared for, maintained and upgraded. A defined space of our very own where talents of many kinds intersect to launch great things.

YARD is a reflection of our deeper focus on making great things. In the sausage factory of marketing, a lot of energy is often focused on the process at the expense of what comes out the other end. But the fact is, nothing we do matters unless something that makes a difference gets made. And that’s what happens in the YARD.

As I often tell our team, the one constant in our business is change, and change is opportunity. And today we have in front of us just such an opportunity. We have been on a journey for the last sixteen years on which we have been lucky to work with a broad variety of collaborators, clients, partners and talents. And this journey, at its best, has been one of optimization- Ever striving to be better tomorrow than we were today. So in this, we’d like to share some news: On Monday, April 19, Markham & Stein will become Markham Yard.

Our name has changed. But our heart is still in the same place.

We bring all the power of a full-service agency, in a compact package focused on generating the one competitive advantage any brand, big or small, can enjoy: The ability to create better ideas. It’s the ultimate unfair advantage. We are a workshop where strategists and designers, producers and writers, technologists and thinkers come together to craft elegant solutions to the business challenges we face. 

We are on a mission to dream, plan, craft and launch better ideas out into the world.

– Markham.


The machines are coming for us

MrRoboto
MrRoboto

The machines are coming for us. Good thing they still can’t tell a joke.

Every advertising publication today is rife with the ominous rumblings of the havoc to be wreaked on our industry by Big Data. The Krakatoa of analytics has erupted, spewing cheap, quantifiable accountability to the bean-counting drones of the world.

Consumer profiling data means we have never known more about who we are talking to, how they react to our communications and what they do next, than we do now.Suddenly, the Pandora’s Box of ROI has been split open and it’s raining KPIs. Now there are those clients who are crowing in triumph at finally being able to march down the hall and tell their bosses they can finally push their marketing dollars to the bottom line in the name of efficiency. This has pundits and perennial boardroom buzzkillers around the world wagging their fingers at us in the ad industry, with a warning that the days of our expensive creative storytelling are numbered.

Not so fast, Mr. Roboto.

While it is true that the digital revolution has created an unprecedented level of consumer data and this data can be molded, harnessed and leveraged to optimize certain dimensions of marketing, at the same time I would argue there has to be something to optimize.

Something that captures people’s attention. Imagination. Interest. And while data might predict what that might be (from an existing set of choices), it cannot create these choices from scratch.

Because Big Data is driven by two simple, efficient and profitable concepts: measurement and predictability. Big data can measure our behavior and use it to predict what we will do next.

The Zombie Apocalypse is here. (Bad news: We’re the zombies.)

My Spotify chooses music it thinks I will like based on not only my data, but that of millions of others. Amazon guesses what it thinks I will buy next. It’s good business. It’s efficient. Accountable. Quantifiable. And it makes us dumb.

It sucks to be reduced to an algorithm. Because predictable is boring. While they may be able to predict, to a degree, what we’ll listen to or buy, the stuff that makes us interesting is where we don’t stick to the script. This is the paradox Big Data represents for the ad industry.

Data-driven marketing is the equivalent of driving while only using your rear view mirrors. It’s great as long as the road is straight. But life is not interesting unless there’s curves.

Fortunately for us, and I mean for all of us with a heartbeat and a pulse, there is a human element that Big Data will never effectively replicate.

And that is humanity.

The organic nature of our humanity is the one thing that can’t be reduced to an algorithm. Which, my friends, is where we come in. Advertising is at its best when it is interesting. And many times, that is found in the unexpected.

Big Data is not compatible with the unexpected.

No computer could have come up with George Hamilton playing the “Extra Crispy Colonel Sanders.” A bot could not have cooked up “The Most Interesting Man in the World.” No microchip would spit out State Street’s “Fearless Girl” installation. And there’s no way big data would help produce Hormel Pepperoni’s “One Man Band.”

There is a positive side of the digital revolution. Not to reduce us to collective and quantifiable behavioral models, but to unpredictably expose us to the things we would in no other way come across.

There has been a quantum shift in the speed and depth of creation, simply because we have so much more to work with. This is where data has the ability to be the raw ingredients that we can build engaging, inspiring experiences with, instead of simply the funnel they go into, or the yardstick they are measured by.

With great data comes great responsibility. What we do with that is up to us.