2021 Winners

Case Summary

A JOINT STATEMENT TO FREE JOB-HUNTING HAIR IN THE NEW ERA. With the power of cultural conversations, Pantene liberates job-hunters who were forced to conform to hair rules in Japan. The brand led the Joint Statement to free job-hunting hair with 139 major companies and organizations, including the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. This activation was featured on 166 media platforms, earning 1.2 billion impressions and 2.3 million social engagements. But most importantly, we observed that many job-hunters embraced the freedom to express themselves through hair and were accepted by the companies.

Case Summary

Telenor capitalized on Pakistan’s transformative Tele-density to not only sustain its dominance in the untapped rural markets but also to gain acceptance at community level. It successfully wiped the stereotype of being a ‘foreign’ Telco with a ‘Western’ agenda, by leapfrogging the outdated, paper-based birth registration process and registering over 1.2 million precious lives! Today you can register a precious life within minutes, absolutely free! No more office trips! No paperwork! All it takes is just a tap, from the palm of your hands with a simple Android-based application.

Case Summary

Over 33% of Bangladesh’s population are financial outcasts and most of them are farmers. They live off the land, without the ability to access credit or savings and are stuck in a vicious cycle of poverty due to the unfairness caused by middlemen. Now, inequality and poverty are often accepted as age-old parts of society—impossible to change, but Project AgroBanking challenged that and paved the way to break this cycle by disrupting the typical banking model and turning fresh produce and vegetables into bank accounts.

Case Summary

To launch the all-new Hyundai Venue in Australia, we challenged every convention in the SUV category and developed a new strategic approach to audience targeting, channel choice and creative development to take on the big spenders dominating the category. Our #4SecondReviews campaign for the Venue broke every digital benchmark for Hyundai and produced the most successful launch for them in the Australian SUV market, driving over $12 million in Venue sales from a total investment of just $635,000 AUD.

Case Summary

When considering the biblical David and Goliath match-up, it might be difficult to imagine Burger King as the character David. But when New Zealand emerged from a national lockdown in May, that’s exactly where we found ourselves. The nation was COVID-19 free—but Burger King’s troubles had just begun. This is how we embraced a new era of comparative advertising to sling our new burger straight at the iconic Big Mac itself—triumphantly positioning our Big King burger as the most delicious (and best-selling) item in fast food.

Case Summary

This is not a case of a brand masquerading as a changemaker. Here’s a story of a small sanitary pads maker who, in its earnestness to grow, unearthed an insight that challenged the way sanitary pads were sold to Indian women, and brought about historic change in media and culture that even legacy leaders didn’t dare to do. Rio’s campaign showcased period truths by showing period blood as red not blue on national television to break the silence around period flow struggles—both physical and emotional—to grow Rio’s sales by 147% and increase distribution by 60%.

Case Summary

He has to pee very often. At times, it happens involuntarily. It’s so bad that he has stopped going out. He doesn’t want to use diapers because they are for babies. Even admitting that he has a problem implies a loss of manhood. This is the plight of millions of Indian men who suffer from urinary incontinence. Here’s how Friends made peeing in their pants acceptable for men who didn’t even want to admit that they had a problem—bringing in 34% new users and resulting in 38% increased sales.

Case Summary

Skinny didn’t have a massive marketing budget. But they did have an army of customers who loved them. Considering that word-of-mouth is 92% more effective than advertising, we attempted to reach every Kiwi by casting our customers in ads targeting people they knew. We asked heaps of them to star in their own campaigns, imploring their friends and family to join them on Skinny. Then we handed over our media budget, enabling each spokesperson to reach their friends, family, workmates and acquaintances.

Case Summary

This is the story of how Bonds, Australia’s most famous underwear brand, overcame girls’ extreme menstrual shame to get them literally singing out loud about their periods. For the launch of their period underwear, Bonds tapped 6 of Australia’s rising music stars to create Unplugged, the world’s first acoustic album written about periods by women on theirs. Through this innovative approach, Bloody Comfy Period Undies brought period underwear into the mainstream, sent sales skyrocketing, and got girls seeing their periods as a source of strength, not shame.

Case Summary

The average NZ home has over $116,149 worth of contents in it. But 45% of Kiwis don’t believe they have enough stuff to warrant insurance. To help ‘too busy’ Kiwis get a better idea of how much their stuff is worth, we created a ‘reality checker’ tool called Tally. Tally uses a custom data set that generates accurate average values to help people understand the true value of their stuff. State saw the highest contents insurance sales of 2020, with Tally users being 6x more likely to get a quote.

Case Summary

Australians gave KFC credit for making ‘great tasting food’, but not making good quality food. Even when we tried to prove our food was good quality, they didn’t believe us. So how did we get Australians to give us the credit our food quality deserved? By undertaking an impossible task - a mission to get Kentucky Fried Chicken a Michelin Star; the greatest signifier of restaurant quality there is. The mission received media coverage worldwide, improved quality perceptions of our food, and increased sales dramatically. Mission impossible? No. Michelin, possible.

Case Summary

Skinny didn’t have a massive marketing budget. But they did have an army of customers who loved them. Considering that word-of-mouth is 92% more effective than advertising, we attempted to reach every Kiwi by casting our customers in ads targeting people they knew. We asked heaps of them to star in their own campaigns, imploring their friends and family to join them on Skinny. Then we handed over our media budget, enabling each spokesperson to reach their friends, family, workmates and acquaintances.

Case Summary

For Whitelion to continue to rehabilitate at-risk youth, they needed to drive donations during 2020. However, with the worst bushfire season since 1938, COVID-19 at our shores and the worst unemployment rates in decades, Australia's generosity was understandably hindered. In light of this, we needed to change Whitelion's traditional approach to fundraising—so we pitched to a myriad of household brands, asking for them to donate their “home address" for 24 hours, re-skinning it to become a donations portal for Whitelion.

Case Summary

A micro-budget initiative set out to mobilise dismally participating overseas Kiwi voters—who believed their vote didn’t matter and that it wasn’t any of their business—in New Zealand’s 2020 Election. Every Kiwi Vote Counts enlisted a Russian national to wake them up to their collective influence and incite them to MEDDLE IN THE NEW ZEALAND ELECTION. The Meddler’s provocative short-videos drove a cut-through social campaign that helped drive the largest overseas voter turnout in history, a 42% increase in overseas resident voters and a disproportionate shift in Australia.

Case Summary

An unknown entity wielding a micro-budget set out to mobilise dismally participating overseas Kiwi voters in New Zealand’s 2020 Election. Every Kiwi Vote Counts enlisted a Russian national to wake them up to their collective influence and incite them to MEDDLE IN THE NEW ZEALAND ELECTION. ‘The Meddler’ punched above its weight with a provocative and cut-through social campaign that helped drive the largest overseas voter turnout in history, a 42% increase in overseas resident voters and a disproportionate shift in Australia.

Case Summary

An unknown entity with a micro-budget set out to mobilise dismally participating overseas Kiwi voters—who believed their vote didn’t matter and that it wasn’t any of their business—in New Zealand’s 2020 Election. Every Kiwi Vote Counts enlisted a Russian national to wake them up to their collective influence and incite them to MEDDLE IN THE NEW ZEALAND ELECTION. The Meddler’s provocative social media campaign helped get out the largest overseas voter turnout in history, a 42% increase in overseas resident voters and a disproportionate shift in Australia.

Case Summary
As Australia increasingly pandered to more political correctness, the QSR category echoed the shift, with every brand pushing the “low-fun options” of vegetarian, gluten-free, low-fat, no added sugar, etc. No one was standing out as the proud, honest version of themselves. Not Australia. Not KFC. This is the success story of awakening the dormant personalities of both Australia and KFC, and being true to our DNAs. By unleashing the free-spirited larrikin within Aussies, we placed KFC on the path to long-term success, even outgrowing the category leader McDonalds.