2019 Winners

Case Summary

Handwash category in India is dominated by King Dettol and Queen Lifebuoy. For an underdog like Savlon to grow, it was imperative to find a new way to make inroads into the Indian market by side-stepping these giants instead of taking them head-on. Hence, we moved away from cities and targeted school-children in small towns. We educated them about the benefits of handwash and positively impacted not only their attitude and behaviour towards hand hygiene thereby bettering their health, but also grew phenomenally to became India’s 3rd largest handwash brand.

Case Summary

Apple is perceived as foreign and locals have limited understanding as to what makes it truly different. Apple tapped into its core brand belief, humanity, and showed it during the nation’s most significant cultural moment: Chinese New Year. A short film about a CNY reunion that lasted only three-minutes was made. Shot entirely on iPhone X, yet never making a single appearance in the film. Over 138 million views later, it resonated culturally with the local audience and made headlines such as, “setting a new standard for advertising".

Case Summary

In the era of customer centricity, the last strategy you would expect from an insurer would be to make things inconvenient. But that’s what Swann Insurance did to disrupt the category and deliver profitable market share.

By creating ‘Inconvenience Stores’ in the middle of nowhere, yet at the end of some of Australia’s most epic rides, Swann Insurance gave riders ‘another reason to ride'. And in doing so drove a 52.2% increase in revenue in a flat market with a profit ROI of 453%.

Case Summary

With USD100,000, we added USD11 million of value to oyster trade in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, a region renowned for delicious oysters.

We achieved this by leveraging shame around the fact that 99% of Hiroshima residents could not write the word “oyster” correctly in Kanji, the original Japanese writing system.

We created a news outcry around this fact and provided a remedy - a school workbook dedicated to oysters - helping children learn how to write and understand everything about oysters, generating positive publicity, and putting oysters back on everyone’s plate.

Case Summary

Netsafe NZ needed to educate and protect people from the dangers of email phishing attacks. But going up against a multi-billion dollar criminal industry (with no media budget) required a solution that thought outside the inbox.

So we built Re:scam - the world’s most unhelpful chatbot. It used the power of AI to imitate human victims, keeping scammers busy talking in circles and safeguarding real people from harm.

Re:scam sent over a million emails, wasted five years of scammers’ time, raised mass awareness, and made global headlines along the way.

Case Summary

Vodafone created an inclusive innovation in the hyper-competitive Indian market, by developing a secure way for its female customers to recharge their calling cards (prepaid connection), without revealing their phone numbers. Unscrupulous retailers had been selling women’s numbers to sexual predators for less than a dollar. Vodafone enabled women to recharge their real numbers by using a fake number, using the Vodafone Sakhi service.

Today Vodafone Sakhi has over 1.6 MM subscribers. Investing in empowering women, instead of simply showing support, helped Vodafone increase usage and ARPU among women subscribers.

Case Summary
When you’re an online safety organization tasked with raising awareness and education around email phishing, going up against a multi-billion dollar criminal industry with no media budget is a tough ask.

Our solution needed to think outside the inbox.

So we created Re:scam: a deliberately unhelpful chatbot that imitated human victims to keep scammers busy talking to an AI – thereby safeguarding real people from harm.

Re:scam sent scammers over a million emails, wasted five years of their time, raised mass awareness, and made global news headlines along the way.

Case Summary

IBM ASEAN spends the majority of their annual marketing budget on one event – Think – with the aim of building their sales pipeline. Despite this high investment, all the communications focused on getting attendees to the event, hoping salespeople would convert attendees to leads. We turned this approach around with Live Leads, an idea to make complicated analogue events as smart as IBM’s category-leading digital lead-management. By importing real-time digital insight into the real world we delivered a 460% improved contribution to IBM’s revenue vs the previous year.

Case Summary
The “52 Mayors” project has tremendously enhanced Danzhai’s reputation in China and around the world over the past year. By the end of 2017, a total of 5.5 million tourists visited Danzhai, a remote and previously unknown location, lifting the county’s tourism revenue up to 2.43 billion RMB. The prosperous development of Danzhai’s tourism industry has significantly improved the living standards of local residents. About 10,800 people, up to one third of the local population, have been saved from poverty.

Case Summary
For everyday emergencies, Filipinos turn to the growing number of convenience stores. There always seems to be one near everywhere, accessible 24/7 for emergency rations and snacks, and they supply for all kinds of emergencies offering cigarettes, condoms, toiletries, even disposable underwear.

BUT WHAT ABOUT EMOTIONAL EMERGENCIES? Like arguments with your boss? Awkward encounters with your ex?

Losing to bigger, sweeter snacks and aggressive competition, this shows how KitKat tapped this shopper mindset and (with a simple, clever packaging idea) was able to ARREST DOUBLE-DIGIT DECLINE and hit DOUBLE-DIGIT GROWTH.

Case Summary

With USD100,000, we added USD11 million of value to oyster trade in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, a region renowned for delicious oysters.

We achieved this by leveraging shame around the fact that 99% of Hiroshima residents could not write the word “oyster” correctly in Kanji, the original Japanese writing system.

We created a news outcry around this fact and provided a remedy - a school workbook dedicated to oysters - helping children learn how to write and understand everything about oysters, generating positive publicity, and putting oysters back on everyone’s plate.

Case Summary

Movember New Zealand needed a national conversation about men’s mental health but were being crowded out in a country with the highest number of charities per capita.

All we needed was a budget of just $NZ178 (yes, you read that right). The platform we used was distinctive, innovative and powerful – and the oldest one of all.

Our strategy turned $178 into over $1.7 million in donations – a 55% increase above average and the best result in seven years, plus generating $550,000 in free media.

Talk about Mo-mentum!

Case Summary

In the era of customer centricity, the last strategy you would expect from an insurer would be to make things inconvenient. But that’s what Swann Insurance did to disrupt the category and deliver profitable market share.

By creating ‘Inconvenience Stores’ in the middle of nowhere, yet at the end of some of Australia’s most epic rides, Swann Insurance gave riders ‘another reason to ride'. And in doing so drove a 52.2% increase in revenue in a flat market with a profit ROI of 453%.

Case Summary
The “52 Mayors” project has tremendously enhanced Danzhai’s reputation in China and around the world over the past year. By the end of 2017, a total of 5.5 million tourists visited Danzhai, a remote and previously unknown location, lifting the county’s tourism revenue up to 2.43 billion RMB. The prosperous development of Danzhai’s tourism industry has significantly improved the living standards of local residents. About 10,800 people, up to one third of the local population, have been saved from poverty.

Case Summary

KILLING TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE

While well-entrenched behemoths dominated the handwash market in the metros, consumer apathy towards handwashing was dominating the tier 1 and 2 towns.

But the opportunity was huge given that handwash penetration in India was only 14%.

Savlon identified a platform that not only enabled and encouraged consumers to adopt the habit of handwashing, but also convinced competition users to switch to Savlon, propelling the brand to no. 3 position within just two years of its launch."

Case Summary

China, while seemingly homogenous from the outside, contains more than 240 cities that their youths call home. Each with a unique culture and backstory.

In a China that is increasingly divided, Coca-Cola – a brand that stands for ‘togetherness’ – had to find a way to remain relevant.

This is a story of how Coca-Cola created a campaign, giving Chinese teens a more authentic means to celebrate their cities, and each other.

All while convincing them to pay 30% more for a premium product.

Result? Sales tripled and brand love score doubled.

Case Summary
Plastic is the plague of our times and everyone associated with its production or distribution has a responsibility to change our toxic relationship with it. Tesco is the largest supermarket in the country and in the nine months since launch, this simple idea has reduced the number of single-use plastic bags by 32% across the entire Tesco network – the single biggest reduction in their history. More importantly, that’s millions of plastic bags saved from the eco-system and proof that millions of customers are adopting a new life-saving behavior.

Case Summary
Sindoor-Khela rewrote history;

For The Times of India: The TOI surpassed The Telegraph in decades to become the #1 English newspaper in Kolkata, a massive achievement in India’s most culturally partisan city. Sindoor-Khela proved to Kolkata that The TOI was not just a ‘national’ newspaper, but a Bengali one.

For Women: While 50 temples in Kolkata celebrated the new Sindoor-Khela in 2017, its impact was far wider, sparking discourse around inclusivity around the world, culminating in winning the Gold Glass Lion for Change at Cannes, 2018.