2024 Winners

Case Summary

Colgate, a household name in India, enjoys a lion’s share in the oral care category. However, growing in a category that enjoys universal penetration is an incredibly daunting task. To address this challenge, Colgate had to look at consumption gains. ‘The Sweet Truth’ campaign aims to encourage Indians to brush at night by latching onto their existing habit of indulging in sweets post-dinner and their belief that sweets cause cavities. This led to a remarkable 4% increase in the brand’s volume growth within a time frame of just 2 months.

Case Summary

For the launch of its flagship Flip5 phone, Samsung New Zealand needed to break younger iPhone users out of mobile inertia. So we created a wickedly cheeky campaign that used Apple’s famous marketing against it, and flipped their perspective on phones by showing that what once made them “different” was now making them all the same. Convincing Kiwis to join the flip side and “Think Different” led to Samsung New Zealand’s best-ever business and brand results for a new device launch. Overtaking Apple in NZ for the first time.

Case Summary

In India, 80% of women do not have access to a bank account. Traditionally, men are in charge of household finances, including access to the bank account. Ujjivan Small Finance Bank wanted to change that. Leveraging a cultural insight, we transformed a cultural signifier of prosperity – ‘Shagun Ka Lifafa’ (Envelope of Blessings), gifted at weddings – into a tool of financial inclusion. We reimagined these envelopes as bank account opening forms. Thereby empowering over 300,000 women with bank accounts.

Case Summary

Valentine’s Day = Approximately 20 Mn+ USD in business opportunities for chocolates alone in India. However, Cadbury 5Star was a misfit on V-day, being an individualistic chocolate with a countercultural message. This was reflected in growth stagnation and relevance decline around V-day, while love-focused brands grew. To counter this, 5Star resonated with underrepresented singles tired of romantic fervour and pity. This birthed the ‘Mush Detector’ technology which not only empowered singles to exist confidently but also brought fantastic success in the form of growth that outperformed love-focused competition.

Case Summary

How might Cadbury Celebrations, a festive-gifting brand, expand its relevance to all-year-round gifting? Birthdays signalled an occasion with the highest gifting intent, but a box of assorted Cadbury chocolates felt pretty ‘cookie cutter’ in a culture of show-and-tell birthday gifting. Cadbury disrupted birthdays with a personalised touch that enabled gifters to create over 1.2 million unique birthday songs through a magical symphony of three Gen AI tools. This experience made birthday wishes unforgettable, pushing consideration by 85% and lifting non-festive sales by a solid 10%.

Case Summary

How is the topic of sex dealt with in Malaysia? Short answer: it isn’t. Censorship laws are airtight and any content related to sex is reduced to a vanilla afterschool special. The implications of this is non-existent sex education and no party brave enough to take on this responsibility. Durex filled the void with Durex Academy. We provided Malaysian youths with a platform to learn, engage, and ask questions about sex. Durex Academy successfully enrolled >300K Malaysian youths. Durex saw a 12% increase in sales, achieving a 68% market share.

Case Summary

This year, Ariel #ShareTheLoad added another page in a successful case study of purpose-led performance marketing targeting gender inequality in the household. We coined the term ‘silent separation’ to name an unspoken truth – women start withdrawing silently from relationships over time because of the unequal sharing of household chores. We created conversation through a short film, using social media, cinema, print, influencers, national TV, and on- ground activation. We moved brand penetration to 20% and consideration to 81%. In 2015, 79% of men believed that laundry is only a woman’s job. It is 26% today.

Case Summary

This work rallied two vulnerable communities into a force that shamed and black-faced their perpetrators. Work that emboldened victims and terrified villains. In a world filled with artificial purpose injected into household cleaners and body wash brands, this case has a purpose so reeking from its very core that in trying to create relevance we created advocates for the brand. Find out how a global brand was compelled to change its positioning based on a local need, which helped it gain 9% growth in usership, significantly over 235 million user bases.

Case Summary

McDonald’s needed its Kiwiburger to win the ‘battle of the burgers’ during the year’s most fiercely contested trading period. To give this three-decades-old burger a new foothold in local culture, its proud heritage was embraced, rather than ignored, in a category typically fuelled by NPD novelty. The best of 1991 was back, along with the maximalist aesthetics and cutting-edge technologies from this iconic era. Nostalgia emerged as a compelling motivator for audiences of all ages, with sales exceeding the prior campaign by 150,000 burgers – a 40% uplift.

Case Summary

Gojek couldn’t beat Grab in Singapore. Moreover, it was also plagued by the perception of being unreliable. Hence, Gojek was always relegated to being the Plan B for all Singaporeans. The brand decided to turn its weakness into strength, using its position as Singapore’s perennial plan B to establish reliability and trust - after all, a Plan B never fails! With a campaign around a hit pop song, Gojek drove reliability, usage, and consideration – winning a place in Singapore’s hearts.

Case Summary

How does a Thai Cultured Drinking Yogurt challenger carve a space for itself in a category that established competitors have turned into a sacrosanct, and deliciously sweet, daily habit? For Delight, and its 0.1% sugar variant, the breakthrough came from tapping into a cultural truth against the giants’ white lie—the delivery of probiotic health benefits made palatable through highly sugar-loaded formulas. By making hilariously loud & clear that ‘if you really care you don’t sugar-coat’, the ‘Not Very Sweet’ campaign garnered million impressions and penetrate to future engine.

Case Summary

This case is a masterclass in massive reputation recovery for a telecom network. Lapses during post-merger integration had left people deeply prejudiced against Vi. We decided to overturn this from the city up, prioritising markets by business. We started with Mumbai, but we could not rely on 3rd party network experts to help, as they had lost all credibility. Hence, we tied up with the Six-Sigma-rated human network of Dabbawalas. They worked with our engineers to restore our network and restore our reputation, leading to a turnaround in business.

Case Summary

We brought the entertainment and production value of a TV show into people’s TikTok feeds in a way they hadn’t seen before, with a new series that helped a new generation of menstruators fall in love with Modibodi.

Case Summary

Yes, it’s a bench. Just a bench. A real one, not AR. Made of simple stone and paint, no epic film, no genAI deep fakes, no cryptoNFThingamajigs. So yes, this Effie case is a rather old-fashioned one. About the enduring power of a single-minded idea, executed with great conviction, and at scale. Proving that even in a ChatGPT era, nothing beats solving users’ real-world pains cleverly and well.

Case Summary

Campaigns focus on customer adoption for digital payments, but merchant acceptance is crucial for growth. Small merchants resist due to the simplicity of cash over complex digital processes. Paytm’s solution – the Soundbox – introduces India’s first voice-based instant payment confirmation system. By making money talk, it made digital payments carry the emotional reassurance and simplicity of cash. Selling at a rate of one every 6 seconds, the Soundbox transforms how small merchants receive payments.

Case Summary

Throughout the years, McDonald’s has faced the problem of a negative perception of a McDonald’s job, impacting recruitment efforts. To reverse this perception, we decided to go beyond just a PR campaign and show the career development and learning opportunities of a McDonald’s career by crystalising them into an in-house training program that is officially accredited by the government to be equivalent to a bachelor’s degree. Our high-profile graduation event drove massive positive buzz for a McDonald’s career, leading to increased job applications and reversing a long-term decline in employee inflow/outflow trend.

Case Summary

Unpredictable climate change has led to Indian farmers losing $5.1Bn worth of crops since agri-practices traditionally follow predictable seasonal patterns. This includes Lay’s farmers who lose 20% of their crop every year despite following best practices, creating supply-chain inefficiencies detrimental to farmers and businesses. To make farms climate-resilient, we developed ‘Smart Farm’, a real-time monitoring system to generate early warnings and actionables before a climate crisis hits. Successfully digitising crops at a pixel level, we are empowering farmers with predictive intelligence amidst unpredictable climate change with 92.5% accuracy and bolstering financial stability by +$55/acre.

Case Summary

You’re the leading Philippine telco. The government has mandated that cellphone users must register their SIMs in six months or get disconnected. But three months in, only 54% of your user base has registered, threatening half your business. Now what? 11 pressure-filled days before the deadline, TNT cracked... jokes! It deployed humour to increase SIM registrations by 25%, swelling daily average registrations by 242%, on a budget 82% cheaper than the previous campaign. In the end, 80% signed up, making TNT the No. 1 telco in successful registrants.

Case Summary

How does a brand (in this case national sports team) leverage a perfectly timed event to ignite a cultural sensation and turn it into a tipping point for lasting change? For the Matildas, Australia’s under-rated and under-supported women’s football team, the breakthrough was in elevating their heroic performance at the first-ever Australia-based World Cup into a rallying cry that ignited the whole nation’s passion.‘Til it’s done’ helped to fill stadiums, set viewership records, trigger government funding for women’s sports and inspire lasting change.

Case Summary

KFC’s market share was slipping due to growing “healthy” chicken offerings in the category and existing competitors diversifying their product range. So, KFC turned to the leaders in taste – the fashion industry. They crafted an extravagant merch line displayed on an up-market catwalk during fashion week to see if putting a brand in the spotlight elevated taste credentials. And it did. As a result, KFC Australia garnered a reach of 704 million, improved KFC’s taste perceptions, and delivered 168 million in incremental revenue.

Case Summary

The rivalry between New Zealand and Australia is legendary. Think USA v Russia. Argentina v Brazil. Ireland v England. Now imagine that rival having the power to decide your country’s future. That’s what happened to New Zealand when ‘Every Kiwi Vote Counts’ asked their rival Australia to cast the deciding votes in their 2023 election. This tongue-in-cheek campaign urged the thousands of Australian voters to ‘sway the outcome’. It generated millions in earned media, the highest voter turnout on record and the largest shifts in electoral seats since 1999.

Case Summary

The rivalry between New Zealand and Australia is legendary. Think USA v Russia. Argentina v Brazil. Ireland v England. Now imagine that rival having the power to decide your country’s future. That’s what happened to New Zealand when ‘Every Kiwi Vote Counts’ asked their rival Australia to cast the deciding votes in their 2023 election. This tongue-in-cheek campaign urged the thousands of Australian voters to ‘sway the outcome’. It generated millions in earned media, the highest voter turnout on record and the largest shifts in electoral seats since 1999.

Case Summary

Hagar International is an anti-slavery organisation dedicated to survivor recovery. It’s a lesser-known cause, and as such, has a harder time finding support. With the pandemic hamstringing Hagar’s growth momentum and uncertainty looming over their big annual fundraiser, Hagar needed a different strategy to secure donations from its affluent donors. Inspired by the Japanese art of Kintsugi, we found a way to engage donors through an unforgettable experience that also explains the good that Hagar brings to the world, ultimately impacting the lives of more than 1160 survivors.

Case Summary

Late by two decades, with haphazard marketing, and battling behemoths like Naukri and Monster whose shares crossed 90%, Indeed had a fight on its hands. To grow, we needed to throw the rulebook out the window. We began with disruption in audience: in a white-collar fixated category, we spoke to SMBs: an overlooked, unyielding audience hiring (almost exclusively) from their social circles. To change behaviour, we disrupted communication, choosing humour-driven storytelling over classic stock-imagery-led B2B codes. Consequently, we drove Indeed’s biggest-ever revenue spike, increasing year-on-year share by +40%. Disruption? Indeed.

Case Summary

Flipkart, an e-commerce platform, faced fierce festive competition with rivals like Amazon, which had similar offerings but deeper pockets - 3x our media spend. Instead of joining the crowd in shouting deals, we hid ours, making consumers work for them. They deciphered secret messages or scanned 60 QR codes for 1 offer. This approach increased the perceived value of the deals, catering to the deal hunter mentality. Results: - GMV increased 128%, revenue ROI of 1:49 - Secured dominant festive market share

Case Summary

This is the story of how ‘Un-Australia’ combined an enduring brand strategy of unity, a provocative idea of satirising the term ‘un-Australian’, and a lamb barbie to deliver new records for Meat and Livestock Australia. Slaying two unique challenges it faced in 2023: a precarious reliance on ageing Australians, along with a weak affinity with younger multicultural Australians, and the monster of inflation pushing the cost of living to two-decade highs which put a ‘cut it out’ target on discretionary, premium brands. Like lamb.

Case Summary

A viral video from a popular auto-influencer threatened Mahindra’s reputation. The brand got dragged into the kangaroo court of social media. Negative chatter endangered business. Due to limited budgets, a costly PR campaign was not feasible. So, we threw out the PR handbook. Instead, we spoke the language of social media. A video for a video. A moment of proof for a moment of doubt. A response that boosted Mahindra’s reputation and grew Scorpio-N’s bookings. Making it the highest selling SUV by the end of 2023.

Case Summary

This campaign is dedicated to highlighting and correcting the bias that makes sportswomen’s achievements invisible in the place we all go to find them: the internet. Many of the world’s biggest sporting records are held by women. However, when asked ‘who has scored the most goals in international football?’, search engines incorrectly favour sportsmen. ‘Correct the Internet’ is an initiative that created a firestorm around this issue, uniting the women’s sporting community, supercharging Team Heroine’s profile, and influencing search giants to change how they report on women’s sports.

Case Summary

This is the story of how Nescafé changed the beverage habits of a generation. Nescafé realised that it was impossible to break the tea habit in India. It would have to create a coffee generation by winning over late teens, the only segment not drinking tea. But these teens thought that coffee was “too strong”, something that “keeps you up all night”. Nescafé made coffee the step change fuel and told them to drink coffee for those exact reasons. Household penetration went from 12.9% in 2017 (pre- campaign) to 34.3% in just 6 years.