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BigTime Creative Shop claims milestone Sports Emmy® win

BigTime Creative Shop claims milestone Sports Emmy® win

Campaign ME27-05-2025

BigTime Creative Shop has received a Sports Emmy® Award for Outstanding Promotional Announcement at the 45th Annual Sports Emmy® Awards presented by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) – a win BigTime says marks the first time a Middle East and Africa-based creative shop has taken home the honour.
The award was for Obsession – Usyk 2 Fury Reignited, a stylised promotional film created for Riyadh Season's highly anticipated boxing rematch between Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury. The film was conceptualised by BigTime, directed by French collective Megaforce, and produced by Riff Raff Films.
Set to Kylie Minogue's Can't Get You Out of My Head, the film offers a surreal and comedic depiction of mutual obsession between the two boxers. From Fury imagining Usyk replacing his entire family to Usyk spotting Fury's face on a sausage – a nod to the fighter's infamous taunts – the film built global buzz around one of the sport's most talked-about rivalries.
The campaign was part of Riyadh Season's broader strategy to cement Saudi Arabia as a global hub for major sports and entertainment events.
BigTime Creative Shop has worked across sport, culture and entertainment and was recognised as the most awarded independent agency in MENA at Dubai Lynx and The One Club, and named Middle East Agency of the Year at Adfest.

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O'Brien has repeated the process about 15 times, adding a rubber duck swimming with a towel to a nature scene by wildlife artist Guy Coheleach, substituting a rubber duck for a dog in a Norman Rockwell print of a boy fishing with his faithful pet, and reinterpreting a still life of a pitcher, tomatoes, grapes and garlic with a rubber duck modeled after Ben Franklin. Artist Seamus Liam O'Brien poses for a portrait. Tribune News Service O'Brien isn't sure what happens to the artwork after he places it back in the store. But they appear to be snapped up by thrift store customers or employees when the pictures re-hit the shelves. 'Oh, gosh, we love getting those in here. It's hilarious,' said Justin Rohr, an employee at the Hidden Treasures thrift store where O'Brien has placed several of his collaborations. 'One of our own staff here has one, probably displayed in the living room of their house.' 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Eye-catching rubber ducks are not far removed from the unusual world O'Brien inhabited as a kid: His parents, Terry and Camille O'Brien, were circus performers with a juggling and slack wire act. Terry O'Brien learned to juggle as a kid in Massachusetts. He ended up performing at the Gay 90's nightclub in Minneapolis in a bawdy vaudeville act to pay his way as a student studying German at Hamline University in St. Paul. Terry and Camille met in Washington, DC, where they both worked as linguists and and cryptologists with the National Security Agency, according to their son. Improbably, they got married, ran off to the circus and raised a family travelling around the country as performers. When Seamus came along, he was recruited into the family act. He also performed as a costumed character at the Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom, portraying Tigger, Goofy and Pluto. 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For his thrift store project, O'Brien browses thrift store art works for something that would be complemented by the addition of a rubber duck. 'You never know when you go in what you're going to find,' he said. 'It's got to have the right look,' he added. 'Nautical scenes are great. Landscapes are great. I can work with a portrait.' He tends to be attracted to obscure images by relatively unknown artists. 'I guess I could put a duck on Mona Lisa's head if I could find that piece,' he said. 'Though that might be too much. I'd have to think about it. If they're too well known, it's not fun at that point.' One example that inspired him was a $2.99 print that he got at a Savers in Columbia Heights that originally showed a hunter releasing a duck decoy into a shimmering body of water. 'This was begging for it,' O'Brien said. His alteration replaced the duck decoy with a truck-sized rubber duck that dwarfed the hunter, his boat and his dog. He typically uses acrylic paint to add a rubber duck to a picture, using one of the actual toy rubber ducks he's acquired as a model. 'I need to look at something when I paint,' he said. 'I can't make things up.' He sometimes mimics the style of the original painting to better integrate the duck into the image. Tribune News Service

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