Nowadays, it’s pretty easy to love the city of Birmingham.
Whether you grew up around here and you’ve witnessed the Renaissance first-hand or you’re a transplant helping add to the vibrant community, it’s hard to miss all the wonderful things happening in our city.
Especially if you’re in the advertising industry.
In fact, we noticed something last month—if the 2016 Birmingham ADDYs are any indicator, local love is off the charts right now in the creative community.
We were really impressed by what a lot of our peers are doing; across the board, Birmingham agencies are working on big, national clients, but their work for local companies and statewide organizations is alive and well and equally impactful.
Many notable Birmingham brands were on display at this year’s ADDYs, like Good People Brewing Company, Railroad Park, TrimTab Brewing, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Birmingham, Zyp Bikeshare, SkyCastle, Avondale Brewing, the Woodlawn Foundation, and We Have Doughnuts. There was plenty of Alabama love outside of Birmingham Metro too, like the Year of Alabama BBQ and Alabama Gulf Seafood. Our friends at the Birmingham Business Journal did a recap as well, if you want to glance at some of the big winners.
As for our own work? Well, here at Big, we live by a simple creed: “Make a difference while making a living.” It’s clear to us that the rest of the ad community feels the same way—and with everything going on in our city, it’s never been more needed.
Sure enough, looking at our own list from this year’s Birmingham ADDYs, local work was the dominant catalyst for awards recognition. In fact, all eight of our Gold ADDYs this year were on behalf of local clients, and aside from three awards for self-promotion, 60 percent of our Silver ADDYs were for local clients as well.
So why is all of this important?
With any ad agency, growth is a major key to success, of course. And that means reaching beyond your city, your state, and your region to shore up a diverse and noteworthy roster of clients.
Sometimes that results in less work for local clients—or less effort put forth for local work.
It’s clear that that’s not the case here in Birmingham. New businesses are opening seemingly every week, and existing businesses and organizations are eager to keep up with our city’s progress. And because the advertising community welcomes and embraces that progress, we’re soaring to great new heights.
That’s why we want to salute our neighbors, our peers, and our own clients as well.
At the end of the day, this is why there’s a Birmingham Renaissance—because people in Birmingham are doing amazing things. Thanks for doing what you do to make our city special.