How the Sundae Festival Set a New Benchmark for Event Marketing at the Netty Awards

Sundae Creative has officially won Best Event Marketing at the Netty Awards for their work on Sundae Festival, a culturally charged daytime experience that transformed Montreal’s biggest festival weekend into a platform for immersive brand storytelling. The win is particularly notable because it was achieved not through a single brand activation, but through the orchestration of multiple household-name brands working together within a shared creative environment. The Netty Awards have celebrated many examples of innovation across advertising and PR, but this win stands out because Sundae Creative used the power of collaboration to redefine what experiential marketing can look like when brands pool momentum in one culturally relevant moment. During a weekend known for high saturation and high cost, Sundae Creative created access, influence, cultural currency, and measurable amplification at the same time. Their win affirms that this model is not only viable, but represents a new path forward for marketers seeking real earned impact.

Innovation and Differentiation

Sundae Festival was built to kick off Montreal’s iconic festival weekend, but its innovation runs deeper than timing or location. The event was engineered as a first-of-its-kind platform for brand engagement, cultural proximity, and content velocity. Instead of asking a single brand to shoulder the full weight of a festival activation, Sundae Creative developed a model where multiple partners could co-own a shared space, each with their own fully realized moment, while benefiting from the collective social amplification. Partners like L’Oréal Paris, Uber Eats, Prime Video Canada, Call It Spring, DAVIDsTEA, and Juvederm were not siloed into their own branded corners. Their activations were designed to be tactile, delightful, and built for the camera, so digital content creation was not an afterthought but a primary objective. The model solved a problem that the industry has been grappling with for years. Major festivals draw massive influencer attention, but buying in is often cost-prohibitive. Sundae Creative made participation culturally powerful, creatively premium, financially efficient, and strategically optimized for social. This is what truly set them apart. Sundae Festival redefined experiential through collaboration, shared investment, and a content-first strategy that extended far beyond the physical event.

Measurable Impact and Success

Sundae Festival did not simply look successful. It delivered quantifiable results that proved its strength as a marketing engine. The festival achieved a 92 percent attendance rate and brought together 170 top-tier influencers and media from across Canada. Those attendees generated more than 1.6 million earned influencer impressions with over 380 separate content pieces posted across multiple platforms. Those are not typical event metrics. Those are results more commonly associated with global brand campaigns. Participation from high-profile guests like Sara Sabry, Noam Raiter, and Nick Faber drove elevated visibility for the event and created organic cross-platform momentum that fueled earned media in real time. Every major partner benefited. DAVIDsTEA saw sustained lineups at their charm bar, Call It Spring achieved high volume content capture around their fashion-forward display, and Prime Video’s interactive water carpet became one of the festival’s most shared visual moments. The impact did not end there. The success of the event helped Sundae Creative secure more work with clients like Uber Eats based on direct outcomes. The proof is undeniable. Sundae Festival became a case study in how cultural timing, creative design, and influencer alignment can convert a physical space into digital currency with lasting value.

Creative Elements and Execution

The creative direction of Sundae Festival was the connective tissue that allowed multiple brand worlds to coexist without conflict. Hosted at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth’s Nacarat terrace, the event mixed Montreal’s summer energy with an elevated design language that felt sophisticated, warm, and inherently shareable. The visual identity played with modern nostalgia and bold summer palettes, which became the backdrop for hundreds of organic user-generated content moments. The experience was built on participation. Prime Video’s book gifting and water carpet activation offered guests the type of unexpected novelty that sparks authentic digital storytelling. Uber Eats created a backstage market concept that tapped into festival culture without being literal. L’Oréal Paris set up Infallible makeup touchpoints that created a natural intersection between event glam and brand relevance. JUVÉDERM took a playful approach through a self-love claw machine that turned brand purpose into a physical moment that was genuinely fun. Nothing was passive. Everything was designed to be experienced, documented, and shared. Sundae Creative did not think about creative as decoration or theme. They treated it as the engine that made participation irresistible.

Overall Excellence and Industry Advancement

Sundae Festival marks a turning point in how agencies can think about experiential. It was not a branded party. It was a strategic cultural platform. Its success shows that when brands come together under a united creative vision, they can generate more relevance, more reach, and more ROI than any single brand could achieve on its own. This model is an advancement for the industry because it demonstrates how live events can be redesigned to function as hybrid experiences that drive both in-person delight and measurable digital results. The metrics speak to scale, but the structure speaks to evolution. Agencies no longer need to choose between cultural resonance and financial feasibility. Sundae Creative designed a framework that delivers both. Their win at the Netty Awards is deserved because they did more than execute with excellence. They created a blueprint that can reshape how experiential marketing is planned, sold, and measured in the future.

About Sundae Creative

Sundae Creative is a global communications and PR agency working at the intersection of brand, culture, and experience. Known for crafting high-impact campaigns that blend creativity with measurable business outcomes, Sundae Creative partners with leading brands to build moments that spark cultural conversation and drive digital amplification. Their approach integrates communications strategy, influencer strategy, and experiential design into unified executions that deliver both relevance and results. Sundae Creative is based in Montreal and works with clients across the consumer, lifestyle, and entertainment landscape.

About the Netty Awards

The Netty Awards are a prestigious awards program that honors top leaders and companies across various industries in the digital age. With over 100 unique categories and a longstanding track record as one of the most trusted organizations in the industry, the Netty Awards celebrate achievements in Design, Social Media, Influencers & Creators, Web, Advertising & PR, and Apps & Software. Recently featured in USA Today for their Top Agencies List, the Netty Awards are recognized as one of the most trusted agency directories for decision-makers.