Rapinoe is an Olympic Gold Medalist, two-time FIFA Women’s World Cup Champion and US Women’s National Team captain. She uses her platform to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, fight racial inequality, promote voter rights and close the gender pay gap. For such efforts, she has eraned the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation’s highest civilian honor.

Bird is a WNBA All-Star, USA Women’s Basketball Player of the Year, five-time Olympic Gold Medalist and four-time WNBA Champion. She is a star marketer and has shown other female athletes that they, too, can secure high-profile endorsements that reflect their personal values. 

White has not only dominated the competitive circuit, but transformed youth culture and brought slope style to the streets. Kids from the bus stop to the lift line express their love of sports Shaun has brought to the mainstream. The brand he’s built shows the world what kind of impact an extreme sports athlete can have on consumer behavior.

Shiffrin is a two-time Olympic Gold Medalist, five-time overall Alpine World Cup champion and four-time world champ in slalom. She is breaking boundaries both on and off the slopes. Her courage and originality has not only shaped ski culture, but inspired a new generation of women to take a creative approach.

FCB New York and Michelob Ultra picked up three Grand Clios—in Integrated Campaign, Innovation and Branded Content—for their “McEnroe vs McEnroe” campaign, in which 2022 John McEnroe got to face off against five younger versions of himself, thanks to some remarkable tech.

Every move from the McEnroe avatars was synchronized with an intricate robotic-return system, allowing the tennis star to play his avatar selves for real. The campaign included a CRM callout, a VIP premiere with press and influencers, and calls-to-action across PR, digital trade, social, influencer, broadcast integrations and TVC encouraging consumers to tune into a one-hour special on ESPN linear and streaming (which the network provided for free).

With over 120 media placements, the sentiment was summed up by Sports Illustrated (“This could be the future of sports”) and Yahoo! (“Reinventing sports entertainment”). Since launch, organic searches for “Michelob Ultra” have grown by 95 percent. 

Michelob Ultra, ‘Michelob Guy’

Michelob Ultra picked up one more Grand Clio, in Social Media, for a Wieden+Kennedy campaign that amplified a pop-culture phenomenon—the viral photo of a guy holding a Michelob Ultra as Tiger Woods teed off at the PGA Championship, while everyone around him was capturing the moment with their smartphones. Within 48 hours, “Michelob Guy” appeared in a commercial, had his own merch line, and appeared on Michelob Ultra cans.

Corona, ‘Plastic Fishing Tournament’

Corona created the first-ever Plastic Fishing Tournament, a global initiative where fishermen from all over the world were rewarded to make the biggest catch of plastic waste in order to sell it to recycling companies. The more plastic they caught, the more money they made, and the cleaner the ocean became. The campaign won two Grand Clios—in Experiential and Social Good.

Corona, ‘Jersey Pay’

Fans attending sporting events in Mexico have to be careful with bringing valuables to the game; because of pickpockets, many leave their wallets and phones at home. This was depressing beer sales at stadiums, so Corona and VMLY&R Commerce invented a unique solution—embedding a digital payment system directly into fan jerseys, which could be scanned at the point of purchase.

Atlético de Madrid, ‘Stepfather’s Day’

Father’s Day is an important celebration in Spain—all brands congratulate fathers, but none had done so with stepfathers. Atlético de Madrid, one of the country’s top soccer clubs, did so with a charming tale that captivated the club’s followers and shared its ideals and philosophy.

Buffalo Wild Wings, ‘The Overtime Deal’

Every time a player sends a sports game into overtime, they not only create more time in the game, they create more great times at Buffalo Wild Wings—and more time to sell more wings and beer. During March Madness, BWW introduced “The Overtime Deal,” the first-ever NIL sponsorships exclusively for players who send a game into overtime. 

Adidas Football, ‘No More Red’

In 2021, London saw the highest number of teenage murders on record. To tackle the problem, Iris created No More Red, an initiative that saw Adidas support the long-standing work being done by Arsenal to keep young people safe from knife crime and youth violence.

The campaign kicked off with a bold statement—removing the iconic red from the Arsenal home kit, creating an all-white uniform symbolic of an ambition to eradicate bloodshed among London’s youth. Adidas and Arsenal teamed up with lifelong Arsenal fan Idris Elba and Arsenal legend Ian Wright to launch the kit, which was worn in game by Arsenal live on national TV during the FA Cup.

Decathlon Canada, ‘Ability Signs’

Since its creation in 1968, the International Symbol of Access has served as a single icon to represent all people with disabilities. Decathlon, a sporting goods manufacturer, reimagined this common wheelchair signage in Canada to show that sports are for everyone. Using Decathlon’s existing signage system and iconic blue brand color, agency Rethink developed 25 custom symbols representing a variety of wheelchair and non-wheelchair based para-sports. Adding sport items and accessories to a universally known icon told a completely different story—one that shows what people with disabilities can do, not their limitations. 

PlayStation ‘Play Has No Limits feat. Kenshi Yonezu’

The Sony PlayStation tagline “Play Has No Limits” was relatively unknown in Japan. To familiarize the market with it, the brand partnered with Kenshi Yonezu—with over 4 billion views and over 6 million subscribers on YouTube, more than any other Japanese musician—who shares an affinity with the PlayStation DNA.

PlayStation launched a branded film and Yonezu’s music video, featuring his song “Pop Song” written for PlayStation and an original character designed and portrayed by Kenshi Yonezu himself. The film follows the character who pushes the boundaries by wielding a playful mind rather than weapons, acting out the spirit of “Play Has No Limits.”

Free Fire ‘The Real Air Drop’

In the mobile game Free Fire, planes fly by and drop items. This campaign replicated that in real life, using real flight data as well as users’ geolocation in real-time. When a real plane flew by their house, a user could point their phone to the sky and collect an airdrop that would go straight to their in-game wallet.

Xbox ‘Therapeutic Play’

The charity Gamers Outreach partnered with Xbox to create “Therapeutic Play,” a reinvention of gaming as a tool to aid recovery for children in hospitals by helping to lower anxiety and stress levels. Xbox, working with McCann London, created The Kart—part console, part hospital equipment, with medical-grade materials for sanitation, ergonomic trays for hospital devices, lift/swivel screen mechanism to help those with impaired mobility and a shape that works with other hospital furniture.

See all the 2022 Clio Entertainment winners here.

American Psycho ‘Deluxe Steelbook’

Illustrated by Justin Erickson, American Psycho is one of the fastest-selling catalog SteelBooks ever, boasting more upvotes and comments on Reddit than any SteelBook in site history. With a creepy peekaboo slipcover allowing fans to peel off Patrick Bateman’s skin, the package boasts easter eggs to engage and delight collectors—including American flag-patterned blood on the axe, a hidden message inside the white plate, the business card holder-styled interior (with Bateman’s reflection visible at certain angles), and the film’s infamous business cards on the discs (Bateman is on the Blu-ray, and his one-upping nemesis Paul Allen’s on the 4K).

Spencer Key Art Poster

The teaser poster for Neon’s film Spencer, about Princess Diana’s existential crisis over the course of a Christmas retreat at Sandringham Palace, was among the year’s most memorable. 

Spencer offers a poetic and highly empathic insight into Diana’s view of her world, and Empire Design’s poster sought to express this in a single moment that encapsulated the rare empathy of Pablo Larraín’s vision and the intense vulnerability of Kristen Stewart’s performance in one striking, impactful and iconic image.

Hulu | Mike Trailer

The Grand Clio for trailers went to Wild Card Creative Group’s stunning “Who Am I?” piece for Mike, the series about Mike Tyson. The piece is a masterclass in sound design, storytelling and emotion—driven the Sammy Davis Jr. track “I’ve Gotta Be Me.”

Apple TV+ | Severance Key Art

The Grand Clio in Key Art went to Apple TV+ for its memorable Severance poster, featuring actor Adam Scott—and hinting at the medical procedure that separates his work life from his home life in the show.

Netflix | Stranger Things Global Rift Takeover

For Season 4 of Stranger Things, Netflix launched a groundbreaking campaign by opening portals (rifts) to the show’s terrifying alternate dimension, the Upside Down, worldwide—across 15 iconic landmarks in 14 countries.

Netflix | Ozark S4 Reverse Recap

This recap trailer unspools backward through the mistakes, bad intent and careless choices that inexorably led to the brink of disaster in this final season of Ozark.

TV 2 Denmark | The Copenhagen Bench

As the largest public-service broadcaster in Denmark, TV 2 felt an obligation to raise awareness of climate change on the agenda—but a new way of communicating was necessary.

To make the consequences tangible to everyone, the network elevated the iconic Copenhagen bench by 85 centimeters to match what the UN considers to be a realistic rise of the sea-level in the year 2100. Or as it says on a cobber plate on the front of the bench: “Flooding will become part of our everyday life unless we start doing something about our climate. According to the latest UN Climate Report sea-levels are expected to rise with up to 1 meter before 2100 if the global warming continues.”

The network placed 15 physical benches in prominent addresses in Copenhagen, Aarhus and Odense—the three biggest cities in Denmark.

TV 2 Denmark | X Factor

This year TV 2 wanted to tell the story of what X Factor is all about, but from a completely new perspective—through the soundhole of a guitar.

Prime Video | The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Logo

With a deep and expansive lore to draw on, and a fanbase with expectations beyond any normal series, Prime Video’s title treatment for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power had to be more than special—it had to be the one design to rule them all. See the video below for an overview of how the mark was ingeniously, and painstakingly, generated.

Adult Swim | Pibby April Fools

In October 2021, Adult Swim posted a trailer for a series that didn’t exist, Learning with Pibby. Initially appearing to be a pre-K animated series, Pibby and her friends are soon engulfed in a very scary, very grown-up glitchy “darkness” that consumes and zombifies everything it encounters. Without any promotion, the trailer ballooned to 10 million views in the first month and kept on growing. Fans began demanding Pibby—tens of thousand fans produced response videos—and then, on April Fools’ Day 2022, the Pibby characters were pulled into Adult Swim’s other shows, like Rick and Morty, Smiling Friends, the Eric Andre Show, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Birdgirl, and Joe Pera Talks with You. 

Adult Swim | Rick and Morty Global Premiere in Space

When TV’s No. 1 cable comedy already crosses all boundaries of space and time and you are in the midst of a pandemic, what can be done to surprise and delight fans around the world? Globally launch the new season and rocket the premiere to new heights. Literally.

Building on the success of “The Uncensored Playlist,” a Grand Clio winner at the Clio Music Awards in 2019, MediaMonks and DDB Germany used Minecraft to circumvent cyber censorship once more—with a virtual library inside Minecraft of locally censored articles, opened on World Day Against Cyber Censorship. 

People could access the library freely and roam the 12.5 million-block structure to find articles that were otherwise inaccessible in their country. As part of the effort, MediaMonks designed and developed a campaign site to drive public awareness for cyber censorship through the one library in the world where silence is discouraged.

In the video above, four creators of “The Uncensored Library” from MediaMonks and DDB Germany speak more about how the project came together.

With 8 billion voice assistants expected to be in use around the world by 2023, the future will be voice-first, but that future currently doesn’t include people with Down syndrome. Voice technology doesn’t always understand their unique speech patterns, leaving them behind in the voice revolution. As a marginalized community, their needs were never considered.

FCB Canada’s Grand Clio-winning “Project Understood” for the Canadian Down Syndrome Society addressed these needs. In this video, FCB Canada chief creative officer Nancy Crimi-Lamanna explains the project, and what was most challenging and rewarding about it.