The winners of the 2013 REGGIE Awards, one of the most prestigious honors in the marketing industry, were announced last night during a gala ceremony at the Brand Activation Association's Annual Marketing Conference in Chicago.

Representing the best-of-the-best brand activation campaigns across a wide variety of categories, marketing agencies and the world's leading brands were celebrated for their outstanding achievements in making the cash registers ring. Such well-known brands as Ford, McDonald's, Nestle, Target, Campbell's, MillerCoors and Taco Bell shared the stage with the likes of Arc Worldwide/Leo Burnett USA, Draftfcb, Mars Advertising and Alcone to accept their awards.

A distinguished panel of judges selected the Gold REGGIE Award Winners in 20 different categories from the more than 300 nominations. A Blue Ribbon Panel of judges, including Cannes Lions judges, then selected the Super REGGIE as the best-in-class of all the Gold winners.

Arc Worldwide/Leo Burnett USA and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater were clearly the evening's big winner, walking away with the Super REGGIE and four Gold REGGIEs for its very successful campaign ”Will & George Come to Life.” The agency won top honors in the Creativity & Innovation, Experiential Marketing, Local/ Regional Campaigns and Small Budget Campaigns categories.

The multi-faceted campaign was designed to build awareness for and patronage of the struggling Chicago Shakespeare Theater by strategically and creatively marketing the performance "Sunday in the Park with George,” which is based on the world-famous painting "Sunday on La Grande Jatte” by George Seurat.

In order to make people re-appear at the Theater, Arc Worldwide/Leo Burnett USA replaced the famous painting that hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago one busy Sunday afternoon with a pixel-perfect fake that had the main characters missing. With the idea that the characters literally jumped out of the painting to appear at the Theater, the characters then magically reappeared singing a song from the play. This experiential event was captured on video so it could be used in a variety of ways as part of an integrated marketing campaign – mobile, social media, contest for a free trip to Paris, traveling exhibit of the faux painting, PR campaign, auctioning of the painting for charity, etc.

The results speak for themselves, and made the cash registers ring:

Other multiple winners were Draftfcb, Alcone and TPN. Draftfcb won Gold REGGIE Awards for Taco Bell and OREO's 100th Birthday in the New Product Launch Promotion and National Consumer Campaigns categories, respectively. Meanwhile, Alcone claimed the top honors for Nestle Dreyer's Skinny Cow Ice Cream and Logitech in the Experiential Marketing (budget over $1 million) and the International/Global Promotion categories. TPN also won Gold REGGIE Awards for Clorox in the Multicultural/Lifestyle Segment category and Jockey Int'l. for the Shopper Marketing category.

"This year's REGGIE Awards featured some truly incredible campaigns,” said Bonnie Carlson, BAA President and CEO. "In keeping with the Awards' original mission, the winning campaigns must build brands and ‘make the register ring', increasing a brand's market-share, profits or volume”.