Engaging success

VMLY&R (now VML) has won the top prize in two categories at the 2023 Acquia Engage Awards. With these wins, since 2013, VMLY&R has won a total of 11 Acquia Engage Awards.

This year, VMLY&R’s work, "Accelerating Mobile App Ordering with Mobile Web" for United Rentals, won the “Best Return on Investment” category. 

VMLY&R successfully addressed United Rentals' challenge of enhancing their native mobile apps to include a product catalog and enable in-app reservations, streamlining the ordering process for users. Overcoming the hurdle of building a full e-commerce experience natively in both Android and iOS, VMLY&R designed a new Drupal theme, ensuring a seamless, app-like experience within the app's embedded browser. The results were remarkable, with a 300% increase in revenue attributable to the mobile app in the first month after release, contributing significantly to a 25% year-over-year growth for the month of August. The use of the existing Drupal site also saved the mobile app team an estimated 3-4 months of development time.

The agency’s work, "Farm to Family® by Butterball®, won the “Leaders of the Pack – Retail and Commerce” category. 

VMLY&R successfully navigated the integration of Farm to Family by Butterball within the master Butterball site (www.butterball.com/farmtofamily), preserving the brand's unique identity while leveraging existing Butterball architecture. The project aimed to seamlessly rehome the Farm to Family site, facilitating familiarity for Butterball visitors while maintaining the brand's distinct look and feel. Overcoming challenges, including re-skinning Butterball components and integrating search results from both brands, VMLY&R and Butterball employed Drupal, Figma, and the Acquia Cloud platform to streamline development. The collaborative effort resulted in the launch of the new Farm to Family by Butterball site within an impressive four months.

Additionally, Wunderman Thompson’s work for Johnson Outdoors earned finalist recognition in the “Leaders of the Pack – Retail and Commerce” category.

The Acquia Engage Awards recognize outstanding digital experiences leveraging the Acquia Open Digital Experience Platform (Acquia Open DXP).

“Our Engage Award winners shared their most impressive digital experiences with us this year,” said Jennifer Griffin Smith, CMO of Acquia. “We are proud of our customers and partners’ innovative strategies and hard work. We’re excited to celebrate their achievements.”

The awards were presented at the Acquia Engage conference in Boston on Wednesday, Nov. 15.