Exverus by Brainlabs shortlisted for 2025 Festival of Media Awards
- Exverus Staff
- Oct 30
- 2 min read
The scientific, paid media agency is a finalist for 3 awards including Best Campaign by an Indie Agency and Best Integrated Campaign.
(OCTOBER 30, 2025) LOS ANGELES -- Independent, scientific media agency Exverus by Brainlabs has been shortlisted for three Festival of Media North America (FOMNA) Awards, including:
Honey Stinger "Marathons to Mainstream" 2024 for Best Integrated Campaign
The Chosen "Indie Streams to Big Screens" 2025 for Best Integrated Campaign
The Chosen "Indie Streams to Big Screens" 2025 for Best Campaign Led by an Independent Agency
FOMNA was launched in 2017 and has significantly grown every year since. It recognizes, benchmarks and amplifies the best of the best media work from North America and Canada. The jury, featuring industry leaders from Google, The Coca-Cola Company, Meta, PepsiCo, Amazon, Microsoft, Mars, L’Oréal, and Audible, will convene for the final round of judging to determine this year’s winners. The awards will be revealed live on Thursday, November 11th, 2025 in New York. See the full shortlist here.
"It feels amazing to be listed among such heavy-hitters in our industry," says Ryan Schuster, MBA, Exverus paid search and social director, who led the Honey Stinger campaign.
Both campaigns illustrate what Exverus by Brainlabs does best for clients ranging from CPG (Premier Protein, Theralogix) to Entertainment (The Chosen, Premier Boxing Champions) and Food/Beverage (Habit Burger & Grill, New Belgium & Bell's Brewing):
combine creative ideas with modern analytics to build full-funnel media plans that move real business outcomes.
For example, we helped Honey Stinger expand its audience from elite athletes to fitness-minded Challengers of all levels by designing a fully omnichannel, multi-retailer digital ecosystem. Our "always on" approach to paid media drove a remarkable 20% increase in annual gross revenue, more than 2.5 times our goal! Amazon sales climbed 40% YoY, and wholesale revenue increased 22%. By meeting our ambitious Challengers everywhere they fuel up, we expanded Honey Stinger from a marathoner's secret weapon to a household name.
And for TV's surprise smash hit The Chosen, our team led by Anna Elema engineered an entirely new model for the entertainment industry by taking an independent, streaming show and premiering it in theaters around the world. We took over Times Square in NYC with giant DOOH featuring promo shots by Vogue photographer Annie Leibovitz. We leveraged community power, interactive digital units, and appeared on tentpole TV events to drive theater ticket sales. As a result, we lifted Aided Awareness by 4.6x the Entertainment category benchmark, sold 6.1MM tickets globally, and generated over $50MM in box office revenue, charting in the Top 3 among big-studio blockbusters.
We're so proud of all the media planners, performance media buyers, data analysts, and executives who collaborated so tirelessly on these campaigns. See you at the winner's table in December!
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