The digital department of Nova TV left its strong global competition in the dust at the Digiday Awards, according to news from New York.

Nova TV won the annual Digiday Awards at a ceremony in New York on Wednesday when it was honored in the ‘Best Use of Social’ category for its campaign promoting the ‘Tvoje lice zvuči poznato’ (Your face sounds familiar) show.

Nova TV was competing with extraordinarily powerful campaigns put together by renown media agencies and advertisers, such as the E!Entertainment TV station, Adidas and Burger King. The main award was nevertheless given to the most viewed TV station in Croatia.

Organizers of the event tweeted their congratulations to Nova TV in Croatian language.

The TV station won because it showed how an innovative approach in using social media can achieve excellent results even when the promoted format has already been aired for the past five years.

The digital marketing department of Nova TV designed a line of formats that were never before used on Instagram and launched a verified Giphy channel which has, with its 47,5 million Giphy views, achieved significantly better results than the one of its British counterpart.

The show has gained 70% more Youtube subscribers throughout the season and has drawn 28 million views on that social media website. It has garnered 200,000 fans on Facebook and 40,000 Instagram followers.

The award, which was sent to the address of Nova TV directly from New York, is the original Digiday award and not one handed out in any special or regional competitions, meaning that the TV station was awarded by the umbrella organisation which includes agencies, companies and media worldwide.

“I am very proud of the entire digital marketing team, this came as icing on the cake after more than ten finals in various international competitions we were in this year,” said Nova TV Director of Marketing, PR and Corporate Communications, Ivana Galic. “We are talking about a prestigious award that is even more significant when taking into account the category we won.”

Best Use of Social is a category applicable to most companies and agencies that compete in the digital world, as opposed to, for example, AI technology or Social Good categories, since today, nearly all companies use social media, Galic explained.

“This category did not treat an individual social media platform, but all social media, so we can guess the size of the competition we are talking about,” she added.

Based in New York, Digiday Awards is among the most prestigious global award ceremonies at which the world’s best marketing and media campaigns and projects are honoured annually.

More information about the other recipients can be found at the official Digiday Awards website, while Nova TV’s application can be viewed on the official Youtube channel.