2026 Winners

Case Summary

SCIENCE DEMONSTRATED IN ACTION, NOT IN ANIMATION. In a market where “science-backed” was a buzzword, Sebamed didn’t just claim science with CGI or a product window with animations; we went under the knife to prove it. Real biopsies, real skin, real results: we put ourselves on the line to stand out in a market flooded with surface-level claims. Project Skin Deep was audacious and disruptive, transforming science from a buzzword into proof, elevating Sebamed’s credibility and justifying its premium.

Case Summary

This was a reputational rescue mission. ASB was increasingly seen as part of the scam problem - failing to protect customers when it counted. We responded by mobilising the entire organisation and launching a nationwide programme to get New Zealand one step ahead of scammers. Protection was embedded across systems, people, and comms - backed by a bold public call to action. The result: ASB became the country’s most proactive scam- fighter, shifting from criticism to credibility and leading the national charge in protecting New Zealand.

Case Summary

Rescuing a market leader from growing irrelevance in a declining market is one of the toughest marketing problems. Ditching Kellogg’s ‘house of brands’ tradition, we took a ‘branded house’ approach and countered doubts about Kellogg's nutritional credibility with a reality check. The ‘Real nourishment - for Real’ campaign broke cereal advertising norms, fusing honesty with humour and culture, using media creatively and subverting ‘unreal’ ad conventions with ‘real’ content and contexts. This bold move worked: as category and competitors continued to decline, Kellogg’s trajectory changed, growing volume and penetration.…for real.

Case Summary

Indonesia lives on noodles - and online. A nation consuming billions of servings annually is also home to over 100 million gamers. In a market dominated by legacy giants and irrational taste loyalty, challenger brand Haraku Ramen was invisible. At the intersection of noodle nation and gaming nation, we found our opening. Gamers don’t pause. Noodles demand two hands. So we invented The One Noodle — a single 3.5-meter strand designed for uninterrupted play. It sold out 20,000 bowls, +23% sales, and turned a small brand into a cultural phenomenon overnight.

Case Summary

Facing intense competition and price-led battles amongst budget paints, Tractor and ACE needed to redefine value beyond price. The campaign targeted an overlooked yet frequent paint buyer: landlords in South India’s rental-heavy markets. Through the idea “Super Paint so Super Rent”, repainting was reframed from an expense to an investment that could enhance rental value. It aimed to defend market share, expand the audience to landlords, and rebuild value perception. Results showed progress across these objectives, including stronger landlord engagement, value perception, campaign recall, and growth in market share.

Case Summary

Facing a severe retail slump and anniversary apathy, McDonald’s Hong Kong didn’t push price promotions for its 50th anniversary; we transformed our heritage into a shared cultural experience. "Back to the Beginning" preserved our 1975 origin story through a primetime period drama and a sold-out immersive museum exhibition. By transforming a corporate milestone into a citywide cultural event, we reminded Hong Kongers that our history is their history. This emotional resonance defied market gravity, achieving record high brand love and historic sales.

Case Summary

How does a brand overcome a huge physical availability handicap in a category driven by mindless on-the-go convenience? In Taiwan, McDonald’s faces a prohibitive 8- minute average detour for commuters. Instead of competing in hopelessly rushed mornings, the breakthrough came from shifting focus to the night before. “Goodnight, See You for Breakfast” reintroduced an iconic local lullaby, in partnership with sleep scientists, to help Taiwanese fall asleep in a sleep- inducing McDonald fantasy and wake up craving the brand’s detour-worthy breakfast treats–increasing breakfast trial to a historic high of 46%, and sales +6.1%.

Case Summary

MasterFoods needed to future proof the brand and ensure relevance for the next generation. As Australia’s #1 tomato sauce, a timely cultural opportunity was identified: the Australian Federal Election. By rebranding as ‘Democracy Sauce’ and hijacking the uniquely Australian ‘democracy sausage’ ritual, we playfully embedded our brand in the national conversation. This culture-first strategy generated massive earned attention, improved brand perception, and grew household penetration by +2.1pts (+0.6 pts with U40s), proving an iconic brand can be successfully reinvented for a new generation.

Case Summary

Dettol Germverse reimagined hygiene education for young children by transforming it from a rule enforced by adults into an adventure children choose for themselves. Instead of instructing children to wash hands or follow routines, we built a transmedia edutainment universe with memorable characters, quests and stories across storybooks, board games, puppet shows, mobile gaming, comics and play parks. By making children the heroes of germ-busting, the initiative fostered curiosity, ownership and joy in learning hygiene, embedding healthier habits through imagination, play and self-driven discovery.

Case Summary

Young Filipinos religiously vote to save their favourite housemate on Pinoy Big Brother, the Philippines’ longest- running reality show and local version of the global franchise. Yet, they tend to neglect their own financial savings. Maya entered the house, transforming the old SMS voting habit into a seamless in-app experience: before voting to save a housemate, users had to save to vote. The brand became part of the show, appearing from weekly on- air segments to fan edits. It deepened brand love and turned saving into a shared pop culture moment.

Case Summary

After a decade of leadership, THE ICONIC’s distinctiveness and salience were fading as Australia’s online fashion category converged. With spontaneous awareness dramatically declining, the objective was to rebuild top-of- mind relevance, restore emotional connection and drive sustainable growth. Grounded in behavioural and effectiveness research, Got You Looking shifted the brand from performance-led tactics to earned attention through joyful, distinctive creativity and a first-look positioning. The platform reversed awareness decline, delivered significant brand and engagement uplifts, and returned THE ICONIC to commercial growth in a highly competitive market.

Case Summary

Travel was starting to look the same everywhere-dictated by algorithms, reviews & rankings.So we redefined “100% Pure New Zealand” as the antidote to homogenous travel-revitalising an iconic asset with fresh meaning & relevance.“Find Your 100% Pure New Zealand” became a personal invitation to a place of extraordinary diversity. Where every traveller can reconnect with their senses through a breadth of unique experiences, adding up to their unique 100%.Reigniting desire, arrivals & revenue, we returned $14.10 for every $1 spent – Tourism New Zealand’s highest ever ROI.

Case Summary

Every summer, the Indian Premier League stops the nation. With over 500 million viewers, it is one of the most-watched sporting events on the planet. It is a stage dominated, for over a decade, by brands chasing mass visibility. So why would a B2B fintech enter this arena?Razorpay didn't see IPL as a media buy. It saw a strategic inflection point—a chance to reframe B2B leadership by showing up not for itself, but for India's entrepreneurs. This IPL belonged to the people building India's next chapter.

Case Summary

This Effie case is about automated, trigger‐based CRM — the “annoying” notifications you get from your bank, telco, and every app you’ve ever installed. For an e-commerce super app like Grab, those pings are oxygen: a far bigger driver of traffic and conversions than paid media, yet chronically neglected creatively. Awwbandon Cart was our bet that if we treated these unsexy, automated messages with the same insight, craft, and care as our brand films, customers would notice, respond, and ultimately, sales would follow. We were right.

Case Summary

How can Blood, a small period-care start-up, win young Malaysian women against giants with massive spend and shelf space? While category leaders romanticise periods through idealised or “empowering” portrayals, Gen Z jokes about the real mess with sarcasm. Blood stopped romanticising periods and embraced the bloody truth, admitting what no brand dares: periods aren’t cute. By turning “un-cute” period symptoms into highly relatable influencer characters, Blood spoke Gen Z’s truth in their own sarcastic voice. In just one year, Blood became Malaysia’s fastest-growing brand, achieving 8× the category’s purchase growth.

Case Summary

Adidas’s Adizero Adios Pro 4 was one of the fastest running shoes in the world. In 2024 alone, athletes wearing ADIZERO broke seven world records. Yet in China’s rapidlyexpanding running culture, the franchise faced a paradox: the shoes trusted by the world’s fastest runners were not the ones most Chinese runners talked about. Instead oflaunching another pristine new shoe, we did something radical: we launched worn ones. By collecting 674 worn ADIZERO shoes from real runners and transforming them into amonumental installation.

Case Summary

During post‐pandemic recovery, Shanghai’s small street bars re‐emerged as a vibrant, fast‐growing channel accounting for significant Hoegaarden growth. In early 2025, new municipal safety barriers unintentionally suffocated this culture, reducing atmosphere, visibility, foot traffic and sales at core venues. Rather than advertise around the problem, Hoegaarden rebuilt the experience, transforming mandatory barriers into warm, compliant extensions where people could sit, gather and unwind. Delivered as a free ongoing service via a B2B app, 70% of bars opted in, reversing decline: foot traffic rose 84% and sales grew 36%.

Case Summary

To combat anniversary apathy, McDonald’s Hong Kong turned a corporate milestone into an unprecedented time- travel experience. "Back to the Beginning" broke the fourth wall of our cinematic brand film, transporting the hyper- realistic 1975 restaurant set to the West Kowloon Cultural District. We built a fully immersive, ticketed museum exhibition allowing fans to physically walk through 50 years of shared memories. The experience sold out instantly, with tickets scalping at 17x face value, proving experiential nostalgia can drive historic brand love and record-breaking sales.

Case Summary

Taiwanese consumers love McDonald’s fries just as much as people around the world. However, in a culture that values politeness and social harmony, direct refusal is often avoided, resulting in fries frequently being casually taken by friends and silently accepted to prevent awkwardness. Recognizing this cultural tension, McDonald’s introduced the world’s first Fry Defense Technique. By using humor as a social language, the idea transformed refusal into lighthearted interaction, allowing consumers to protect their beloved fries without violating cultural norms, while strengthening emotional brand connection and cultural resonance.

Case Summary

Travel was starting to look the same everywhere-dictated by algorithms, reviews & rankings.So we redefined “100% Pure New Zealand” as the antidote to homogenous travel-revitalising an iconic asset with fresh meaning & relevance.“Find Your 100% Pure New Zealand” became a personal invitation to a place of extraordinary diversity. Where every traveller can reconnect with their senses through a breadth of unique experiences, adding up to their unique 100%.Reigniting desire, arrivals & revenue, we returned $14.10 for every $1 spent – Tourism New Zealand’s highest ever ROI.

Case Summary

For years, Whisper has stepped in wherever periods threatened a girl’s education. In India, deep-rooted stigma means periods are rarely discussed, leaving girls unprepared and unable to manage them at school, often forcing them to stay home and eventually drop out. In 2024, that threat arrived earlier than ever, as girls began menstruating as young as eight, putting 1 in 3 at risk. Whisper responded by redesigning pads for younger bodies and pairing them with age-appropriate education through songs, cartoons, and adult guidance.

Case Summary

For decades, sexual health marketing treated herpes with caution - clinical messaging, quiet education and risk avoidance. It reduced harm but failed to reduce stigma. The New Zealand Herpes Foundation needed a different model. Make New Zealand the Best Place in the World to Have Herpes disrupted the category by replacing sensitivity with competition, reframing stigma as a national mission powered by pride and participation. In seven weeks, the campaign achieved a verified population-level shift in perceived support and unprecedented engagement, proving that changing the marketing model changed the outcome.

Case Summary

Most social-good work adds aid to broken systems. This case rewired the system itself. Global soil degradation poses a serious threat, but farmers were trapped in a testing model that arrived too late to help. Project Mitti didn’t ask farmers to care more; it redefined what care looked like by translating a cultural-belief (Mother Earth) into a usable service. When testing became an act of care instead of compliance, farmers returned in-season. The proof is behavioural: +9100 farmers began testing, 40% potato- quality improvement and 6.1% yield lift vs pre-campaign period.

Case Summary

Spend on road safety increased year after year, yet driving behaviours worsened. Fatalities rose, risky habits became normalised and decades of fines and fear-based enforcement failed to create lasting change. The traditional playbook wasn’t working. The system punished behaviour but didn’t improve it. AAMI shifted from enforcement to engagement, creating a data driven initiative that gamified safe driving and turned road safety into a national sport. The result was measurable behaviour change, repositioning AAMI from policy provider to road safety champion and proving marketing can deliver meaningful social impact.

Case Summary

To challenge an outdated law requiring a husband’s consent to use frozen eggs, we launched “Unfreeze My Rights.” Through viral videos and a provocative stunt—a woman publicly "husband-hunting" solely for legal reproductive rights—we exposed the law’s absurdity. The campaign achieved 90% media coverage, sparking a national debate that pressured the Ministry of Health and Welfare to draft historic legislation. This reform successfully secured reproductive autonomy for single women and same-sex couples in Taiwan.

Case Summary

TO WIN DURING THE MOST TRADITIONAL SEASON– CHRISTMAS, COCA-COLA ABANDONED ITS PLAYBOOK AND MADE THE GIVERS THE RECEIVERS. With Christmas spirit low, we reversed the flow of giving. We empowered families to gift emotional presence to loved ones overseas, transforming a season of scarcity into one of connection. This act of shared generosity resonated nationally, delivering the brand’s biggest Christmas season to date by growing volume (+23.8%) and value share (+113 BPS).

Case Summary

How does a brand overcome a huge physical availability handicap in a category driven by mindless on-the-go convenience? In Taiwan, McDonald’s faces a prohibitive 8- minute average detour for commuters. Instead of competing in hopelessly rushed mornings, the breakthrough came from shifting focus to the night before. “Goodnight, See You for Breakfast” reintroduced an iconic local lullaby, in partnership with sleep scientists, to help Taiwanese fall asleep in a sleep- inducing McDonald fantasy and wake up craving the brand’s detour-worthy breakfast treats–increasing breakfast trial to a historic high of 46%, and sales +6.1%.

Case Summary

Stresstabs was feeling the stress: It was running behind the recovery pace of the multivitamin category, struggling against an established brand that defined stress as mere lack of energy. To grow stagnant sales as fast—or even faster—than the category and steal share from a leader, Stresstabs created a short video with elements antithetical to the conventions of pharmaceutical advertising. The result was a campaign that saw a 12.3% increase in sales, surpassing a leader in market share–a push that put the stress on success.

Case Summary

Once synonymous with water storage tanks in India, Sintex had become a forgotten brand after years of silence and issues of bankruptcy. To regain dealer trust and shelf presence across Indian hardware stores, Sintex undertook the ‘Take The Lid’ campaign which turned its newest Pure Plus tank lid into a mini demo for dealers and consumers to experience while saving on floor space costs. This ‘lid hack’ helped spark curiosity about Sintex’s latest water storage tanks and generated outsized returns by leveraging creative, community-driven tactics without relying on media spends.

Case Summary

KitKat in Japan is not just a "break" brand. Until 2003, KitKat had been struggling to gain cultural relevance in an overcrowded, commodified chocolate market. The brand leveraged the one and only value it possessed in its own name: that “KitKat” sounds like “Kitto Katsu” which means “Surely (Kitto) Win (Katsu)” in Japanese, and started to build the brand as a vehicle of encouragement. After 20 years, KitKat became synonymous with “encouragement” and became the strongest, most meaningful, and the best-selling chocolate brand in Japan.

Case Summary

This Effie case is about automated, trigger‐based CRM — the “annoying” notifications you get from your bank, telco, and every app you’ve ever installed. For an e-commerce super app like Grab, those pings are oxygen: a far bigger driver of traffic and conversions than paid media, yet chronically neglected creatively. Awwbandon Cart was our bet that if we treated these unsexy, automated messages with the same insight, craft, and care as our brand films, customers would notice, respond, and ultimately, sales would follow. We were right.