Charlie and the Chocolate Factory's 2016 Broadway launch campaign by AKA agency transformed NYC into Willy Wonka's world, winning three Gold Davey Awards.
How AKA Turned NYC Into Willy Wonka's World of Pure Imagination
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory's 2016 Broadway launch campaign, created by New York agency AKA, transformed the streets of New York City into an immersive visual world of pure imagination, using three teaser spots and one full-length trailer to build anticipation for the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre production without ever showing the musical itself.
Published in August 2016, the campaign operates under two related titles documented across trade sources. AKA internally branded the broader launch effort as Wonka's World of Imagination, while award submissions and coverage from broadwayworld.com reference the integrated campaign under the name Something Delicious. Both titles orbit the same strategic axis: the enduring creative equity of Roald Dahl's original story and the iconic song A World of Pure Imagination, which the campaign uses as its emotional and sonic signature. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 63 out of 100.
The campaign was produced entirely in the United States, with filming conducted across 22 New York City locations, per clapboard.com. Rather than presenting audiences with a conventional theatrical advertisement, AKA constructed a cinematic world in which the magic and wonder associated with Willy Wonka spills out of the theatre and into recognisable urban spaces across New York. This decision to anchor the campaign in the lived geography of New York City gave the work a specificity and scale unusual in Broadway promotional advertising, positioning the production as a cultural event rather than simply a ticketed show. The campaign contains two media assets documented on clapboard.com and was submitted to the archive nearly nine years ago.
AKA identified a clear strategic opportunity in the cultural memory surrounding Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The intellectual property carries decades of accumulated affection across generations of American audiences, anchored by the 1971 film adaptation and the song A World of Pure Imagination, which functions as an almost universally recognised emotional cue in the United States. Rather than reintroducing that heritage or explaining the Broadway musical's narrative, AKA extended the story's existing pure imagination equity into a citywide theatrical launch platform, as documented by Aka Nyc.
The Broadway theatrical advertising market in the United States is competitive and increasingly sophisticated. Productions such as Hamilton, which had its Broadway opening in 2016, and Wicked, a long-running competitor in the family-oriented musical genre, had already raised audience expectations for inventive, visually ambitious promotional work. Against this backdrop, AKA's strategic choice to build anticipation through cinematic withholding — deliberately avoiding any footage of the stage production — was a calculated risk designed to create curiosity rather than simply communicate product attributes.
The campaign also responded to a shifting media environment in which Broadway productions compete for attention against streaming entertainment platforms and large-scale film releases. By producing work that functioned as short-form film content rather than conventional advertising, AKA positioned the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory launch to travel beyond paid media placements. The campaign was subsequently named an editor's pick by Ad Age Creativity, according to clapboard.com, which reflects its success in earning editorial amplification alongside paid distribution across the United States market.
The Something Delicious campaign was directed by Jamaal Parham and Bashan Aquart, with Aquart also serving as executive creative director, according to clapboard.com. Ryan Cunningham and David Barrineau shared creative director responsibilities, while Cunningham also contributed as a copywriter alongside Sam McMenamin. The production was executed by Very Rare Productions, with Adam Coffia serving as executive producer and Monique Perreault as producer.
Cinematography was handled by Adam McDaid, whose work across 22 New York City locations gave the campaign its distinctive quality of finding theatrical wonder inside recognisable urban environments. The editorial team comprised Stephen Mlinarcik, Sam Goetz, and Eli Mavros, whose cutting shaped the pacing that allows each teaser spot to build suspense independently while contributing to the cumulative arc of the full-length trailer. Together, the three teasers and one trailer form a structured reveal sequence designed to sustain audience attention across the campaign's release window in the lead-up to the production's Broadway previews, which began at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on March 28, 2017, as reported by broadwayworld.com.
The final commercial contained more than 30 visual-effects shots, according to clapboard.com. VFX work was completed by Platinum Platypus, with Pete Sussi among the credited VFX personnel. This volume of effects work is substantial for a theatrical advertising campaign and reflects AKA's ambition to render the world of pure imagination as a tangible, cinematic environment rather than a stylised graphic treatment. The decision to embed Wonka's visual language into actual New York City streetscapes — rather than constructing an abstracted fantasy environment — grounded the magical elements in a geography that the campaign's primary audience in the United States would immediately recognise. Production credits are documented on clapboard.com and shootonline.com.
AKA's Something Delicious campaign earned three Gold Davey Awards in 2016, according to clapboard.com. The wins spanned distinct categories: Gold for Integrated Campaign in Promotional and Branding, Gold for Commercial in the Entertainment category, and Gold for Online Advertising and Marketing in the Campaign Categories for Promotional and Branding covering online video content. The Davey Awards are administered by the International Academy of the Visual Arts and recognise creative work from smaller and mid-sized agencies, making AKA's triple win in a single year a meaningful industry benchmark for the theatrical advertising sector in the United States.
Beyond the Davey Awards, the broadcast elements of the campaign won multiple Telly Awards, as documented by clapboard.com. The Telly Awards recognise excellence in television and video advertising, and success across both award programmes indicates that the campaign performed credibly in both digital and broadcast distribution contexts. The campaign's additional recognition as an editor's pick by Ad Age Creativity, per clapboard.com, extended its reach beyond the theatrical advertising community into the broader creative industry conversation in the United States.
No verified box office attribution data directly linking the campaign to ticket sales for the Broadway production is publicly available. However, the structural effectiveness of the campaign is evident in its format choices: a sequenced release of three teaser spots before a full-length trailer mirrors film studio launch strategies and is designed to sustain search interest and social conversation over an extended period, building audience intent ahead of the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre's first previews in 2017.
AKA created a 2016 Broadway launch campaign titled Something Delicious, also known as Wonka's World of Imagination, for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The campaign comprised three teaser spots and one full-length trailer, filmed across 22 New York City locations, and deliberately avoided showing the stage production to build anticipation, according to clapboard.com.
The Something Delicious campaign won three Gold Davey Awards in 2016, according to clapboard.com, covering integrated campaign, entertainment commercial, and online video categories. The broadcast elements also won multiple Telly Awards. Ad Age Creativity named the work an editor's pick, recognising it as a standout example of theatrical advertising in the United States.
AKA made a deliberate strategic choice to withhold footage of the Broadway musical itself, as documented by aka.nyc. Filming across 22 New York City locations embedded Willy Wonka's world of pure imagination into recognisable urban environments, creating curiosity and positioning Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a citywide cultural event rather than a conventional theatrical advertisement.
Jamaal Parham and Bashan Aquart co-directed the campaign, according to clapboard.com. Aquart also served as executive creative director. Ryan Cunningham and David Barrineau were creative directors, with cinematography by Adam McDaid and VFX work by Platinum Platypus, whose team delivered more than 30 visual-effects shots in the final commercial.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory began Broadway previews at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on March 28, 2017, as reported by broadwayworld.com. AKA's August 2016 campaign launched approximately seven months before previews began, giving the Something Delicious campaign an extended runway to build audience anticipation across the United States market ahead of opening night.
The Clapboard Score for AKA's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 2016 Broadway campaign is 63 out of 100. This score reflects the campaign's strong craft credentials and award recognition, including three Gold Davey Awards and multiple Telly Awards, balanced against the limited publicly available performance data connecting the creative work to measurable audience outcomes.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
