The New Yorker: Caption Contest

Credits & Description:

Title of Entry: Caption Contest
Brand: The New Yorker
Product/Service: The New Yorker
Client: The New Yorker
Entrant Company: BBDO New York
Creative Agency: BBDO New York
Chief Creative Officer: David Lubars (BBDO Worldwide)
Chief Creative Officer: Greg Hahn (BBDO New York)
ECD: Tom Markham
Creative Director: Damjan Pita
Developer: Alex Massicott, Lead Developer / Nick Russo, Developer
Director of Integrated Production: David Rolfe
Jimmy McGee, QA Manager
Bo-Yoon Kim, Animator
Katie Penna, Jr. Interactive Producer
Vishal Dheiman, Head of Innovation
Date of Release: 2019-12-09
Notes: The New Yorker’s weekly Caption Contest has become a highlight for readers over the years. But with the New Yorker’s readership rapidly aging, they needed to reach a younger audience. So, to recruit a new generation of caption writers, we turned to the platform where young people flex their caption writing every day – Instagram Stories. Here, people show off their sharp wit by writing funny captions on their videos and photos. So, we turned The New Yorker’s Caption Contest into a weekly social contest on Instagram. Every week, we share the un-captioned cartoons through the New Yorker Instagram account. People are prompted to copy the cartoon into their own story, add their super-clever caption, and share it. With every share we opened up a whole new audience, and a whole new group of people desperate to one-up their friends with a wittier caption. At the end of the first competition we had already raised the submission by 10% and created 1.86 mm organic social impression, with a 0$ media budget. In fact, this social extension to the Caption Contest proved so popular that The New Yorker have decided to turn this promotion into an ongoing program.