Brand Studio is officially the best studio in the world. It has won the prestigious world Original Advertising Award. In total, Seznam studios were nominated in seven categories and ranked in five of them – twice in first place, twice in silver and once in bronze.

“When we saw that we made it into the top three and competed with names like the BBC or The Guardian, we didn’t even expect much success. On the one hand, a lot of euphoria and on the other, the feeling that we really made it and we are chasing foreign mansions,” explains the head of Brand Studio List, Ondřej Sitta.

The award in the Studio of the Year category was the most appreciated by the team. “That’s all the work we did as a team last year,” said Sitta.

The campaign for automaker Hyundai Jedeme na EURO also won silver, with a team of sports editors, News List, also collaborating. The video series charts a journalist’s journey to the European Football Championship.

“We drafted and asked Newsroom if they could come up with interesting content. It’s purely up to them, we don’t give them notes on what such content looks like, we don’t even participate in scripts. The only thing we say about each other is another is about the Euros and we will give them a car they can drive there,” said Sitta.

The Brand Studio roster for the series created the site and also encouraged viewers to send messages to the Czech national team. However, sports editors played a key role in the campaign. “That’s one of the pillars. When we asked what effect it had on people, it was just a video combined with a sponsorship message,” said Sitta.

At the same time, when Native Advertising Listings started in 2018, there were concerns over whether Czech companies would achieve global competition. “Now that we’ve done it, I think we can say we’re equal there,” Sitta said.

The Brand Studio listings were created in 2020 and so-called native ads are starting to be done on a large scale. This is a type of advertisement that does not irritate the recipient and resembles a journalistic article rather than a text ad.

“Last year, we were able to record five series for Stream, launch our own podcast, and create more than 250 customized client products. That already has the right elements for us to compete with the world,” concluded Sitta.