Electric Symphony Media is recognized by MediaPost’s Creative Media Awards as a finalist in the category of Social Media for our work combatting anti-semitism with Hillel International.

The Creative Media Awards honor the creativity inherent in media planning, reflecting MediaPost’s belief that media — the process of buying, planning and strategy — is every bit as creative as depicting storyboards for a print or TV ad campaign. Winners will be announced on February 3, 2022. 

ESM is honored to have our work recognized alongside such prestigious contenders. As a boutique agency, we pride ourselves on creating media campaigns that are just as competitive as much larger organizations—without the red tape. We care deeply about developing lasting partnerships with each of our clients, in order to ensure that we deliver award worthy work that is precisely tailored to their unique goals.

Hillel International is the largest Jewish campus organization in the world. Their network of student leaders, professionals and volunteers encourages generations of college students to celebrate Jewish learning, pursue a life of social justice and connect with their peers and Jewish people on a global scale. 

In Fall 2021, ESM partnered with Hillel and creative agency Oberland to develop the #OwnYourStar campaign, in order to encourage Jewish students, community members and allies to express their pride in their identity or solidarity with the Jewish community and to stand up to anti-semitism. 

In an age where anti-semitic instances on college campuses have tripled, ESM is honored to have worked on such a meaningful and successful campaign dedicated to building community and combating hate. Over the years, ESM has repeatedly affirmed our commitment to the power advertising-as-advocacy can wield, through our work supporting other non-profit and advocacy organizations, including the volunteer organization Hadassah, the youth and family support non-profit Youth Villages, and Eric Adams’ campaign for Mayor of New York.

ESM’s multi-channel approach began with detailed market research and data analysis. Ultimately, we centered the campaign on the social media platforms where Jewish students spend the most time: TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook. As we built the campaign, we prioritized the ability to test social media channels, custom audiences, creative assets, and tactical approaches against one another. Because ESM is a small, tight knit team, fueled by open communication with our partners, we could quickly and efficiently incorporate data learnings to make recommendations, provide feedback, and continuously optimize throughout the campaign’s flight, ensuring that we delivered engaging messaging at the right time, to the right people.

In the span of five weeks, the campaign generated 4.8 million impressions, reaching 2.8 million users and garnering 15,227 post likes and reactions. Most importantly, it inspired 2,031 user generated posts using the #OwnYourStar hashtag, as members of the Jewish community came together to celebrate all the reasons that they are proud to be Jewish.

ESM is a media partner that helps brands and agencies uncover unique value in marketing investments. We believe the most successful media campaigns interweave the art of past experience with the science of data analytics. ESM offers end to end media planning, activation, and reporting services. The agency’s tech stack provides a connective thread across all channels, but as a team we emphasize the importance human experience plays in predicting outcomes.  Whether it’s traditional, digital, or emerging media, the knowledge ESM has gained from running campaigns that are large, small, geographically diverse, with different KPIs, goals, and assets gives us a strong library of learnings to apply to future activity.