Verve has secured three Gold awards at The Drum Experience Awards 2025. The wins recognise work delivered for The Coca-Cola Company, Guinness and Smirnoff, acknowledging a year of culturally centred, creatively ambitious brand experiences across some of the regions biggest festivals.
The awards span established campaigns and new-to-market activations, collectively reflecting Verve’s long-standing belief in partnership and purpose as the foundations of effective experiential work.
A standout year for music-led brand experiences
Verve’s first Gold came in Experiential: Established Experience for Coke Studio, Coca-Cola’s global music platform. The team evolved the experience for the Irish market, blending live performances, content creation and nuanced brand storytelling. The result was a culturally relevant activation that balanced scale with intimacy, giving audiences genuine access to new artists and meaningful shared moments.
A second Gold was awarded in Experiential: Integrated for Guinness Lovely Days at All Together Now, a multi-year creative journey that has reshaped how Guinness shows up in the Irish summer. At ATN, Verve helped bring the Lovely Days platform to life through a festival arena designed to be both immersive and unmistakably Guinness. From the architecture and lighting to the programming and flow of the space, every element was built to express one idea: that any summer moment can be a Lovely Day for a Guinness.
Verve’s third Gold came in Experiential: Live Experience for the Smirnoff Stage at Electric Picnic. The challenge was to create a vibrant, inclusive destination that reflected Smirnoff’s energy and openness, while standing out within the dynamic pressure of Ireland’s largest festival. The resulting stage became a hub of colour, culture and high-tempo programming, with visual identity and audience experience working hand in hand. The stage became a living expression of Smirnoff’s belief that the party is better when everyone’s invited, creating a space where people felt welcome, seen and part of the moment.
Partnership at the core
Across all three wins, a shared thread emerges: the work was built through deep collaboration between brand teams, festival partners and Verve’s strategists, designers, creatives and producers. These experiences required more than great ideas. They relied on alignment, trust and teams willing to push together, whether that meant refining a platform over multiple years or bringing a bold new concept to life from scratch.
Looking ahead
As Verve continues to grow across Dublin, London, Amsterdam and more recently, in Singapore, these awards reinforce the agency’s commitment to creating brand experiences that move people, shift perception and add something meaningful to culture.
