2023 Winners

Case Summary

In India, social mobility of women was bound by their physical mobility. To liberate women socially, it was critical to unshackle their physical mobility. Hero Pleasure, India’s first scooter for women, pioneered women’s liberation by enabling their personal mobility. But society resisted this liberation. They discouraged women’s mobility by insulting their driving abilities. Hero Pleasure turned this prejudice into pride by showing the society what all liberated women are driving – homes, offices, countries. Our movement unlocked growth and garnered interest in the product as well as brand beliefs.

Case Summary

Revitalizing Brand Dancow in Indonesia - Breaking your own formula.  Dancow had been slowly losing ground on a category that it had built.  Players were growing using the same playbook that Dancow had built over 90 years in Indonesia. This case shows how Dancow shifted category codes and country norms and connected with its consumers, delivering growth of 12%.

Case Summary

This is the story of how Maya rose to become the fastest-growing digital bank in the Philippines, by taking a significant step towards bridging the banking gap. The key to its success lies in its bold approach to digital banking, which no other bank in the country would dare to do. It transformed Gen Z interests (music, arts, gaming) and turned it all into a cohesive campaign. For the first time ever, a bank topped the music charts, breaking away from the conventional ways of advertising for a bank.

Case Summary

‘Love Your Gut’ by Dutchie Yoghurt proved to drive a bigger purpose on the most overlooked health, the Gut Health, admist the rising trend of functional food. The campaign strategically makes the matter easy to digest by ‘metaphor-ing’ how we take care of Gut to the familiar behavior of e-commerce… a delivery that never arrives. In the end, a new health agenda of ‘loving your gut before anything’ was formed, with outstanding results of surpassing KPI by 56% and closing the gap by turning from an irrelevant flavorful snack to functional food.

Case Summary

New Zealand is one of the most under-insured countries in the world for life insurance. To tackle this, we partnered up with NZ’s most popular ‘murder mystery’ TV show – The Brokenwood Mysteries. In an partnership that pushed the boundaries of what was possible with a media integration, we brought the murdered characters back from the dead for one last performance that challenged Kiwis to rethink preconceptions around life insurance. This inventive use of television, captured the attention of NZ and got the nation more interested in life insurance.

Case Summary

Skinny. A telco who believes in low prices, and happy customers. They want big attention, but won’t waste their customers money on big name celebrities. So in 2022, we open-sourced their brand campaign to the public. The entire country could record Skinny’s new campaign on their mobile…for free. 34 unique radio scripts, on buses and billboards and bar coasters, each one tailored to its location. A guerrilla OOH campaign, that evolved into a radio campaign, that delivered a 34% increase in new customers yoy. Our most effective recruitment campaign ever.

Case Summary

How does a food delivery platform launch its subscription program against a dominant player with a two-year headstart, an omnipresent marketing push, and a 98% bigger budget, in a year when food deliveries are dropping? You take an endearing Filipino habit, and tie it to your brand. With just two online videos, GrabFood increased subscriptions by 200%, ballooned its share of voice to 80%, and grew its market share by more than 100%. Talk about grabbing a crisis and turning it into an opportunity.

Case Summary

This campaign helped Uber unlock an entirely new revenue stream through their new membership product, Uber One, by challenging people’s innate psychological biases that were getting in the way of helping them save money. This involved not only understanding our audience, but finding the most effective way to introduce a complex, unfamiliar product to deliver cut-through, connection and comprehension. The result? One of the most successful membership launches for Uber globally, delivering a 368% short-term return on investment and a lifetime membership value of $50 million USD in incremental revenue.

Case Summary

In Thailand, the snack market is saturated with brands competing for its place in consumers’ minds. How can Voiz stay relevant with its limited budget and its old platform message “Too Good to Share?” With “The Eyes” – a series of fun short films showing a pair of eyes that pop out to reveal how Voiz is so good that you don’t want to share it – Voiz was able to drive awareness and engagement among young consumers with its humorous storyline, fun tone, and extra twisted execution.

Case Summary

‘Love Your Gut’ by Dutchie Yoghurt proved to drive a bigger purpose on the most overlooked health, the Gut Health, admist the rising trend of functional food. The campaign strategically makes the matter easy to digest by ‘metaphor-ing’ how we take care of Gut to the familiar behavior of e-commerce… a delivery that never arrives. In the end, a new health agenda of ‘loving your gut before anything’ was formed, with outstanding results of surpassing KPI by 56% and closing the gap by turning from an irrelevant flavorful snack to functional food.

Case Summary

New Zealand is one of the most under-insured countries in the world for life insurance. To tackle this, we partnered up with NZ’s most popular ‘murder mystery’ TV show – The Brokenwood Mysteries. In an partnership that pushed the boundaries of what was possible with a media integration, we brought the murdered characters back from the dead for one last performance that challenged Kiwis to rethink preconceptions around life insurance. This inventive use of television, captured the attention of NZ and got the nation more interested in life insurance.

Case Summary

Chocolate is often seen as a default gift option competing with multiple alternatives. For Raya 2022, Cadbury increased sales by making our packs both helpful and delicious. Traditionally, Malaysians gift baked Kuihs at Raya. Whilst there’s pride in saying “baked it myself”, many no longer do as they believe it takes too much effort. We reimagined our packaging to make baking simple, by generously turning them into baking sheets with regional recipes with chocolate. In doing so, we made Cadbury Dairy milk a key ingredient of Raya, helping Malaysians bake from the heart.

Case Summary

From summer ale to seltzer, “innovation” in the drinks industry usually just means jumping on the latest bandwagon. But not in the case of -196. This isn’t just the story of a new product, but a distinctive new brand that turned category convention on its head and turned Aussies onto an obscure shochu drink that was “big in Japan”, but unknown here. In one year, ‘Extreme Japanese Spirit’ helped -196 overtake ‘White Claw’, becoming the no.3 Light RTD with an ROI of $4.75: Beam Suntory Australia’s most successful launch ever.

Case Summary

ING faced a challenge: 80% of their customer base held savings products, which were increasingly less beneficial to the customer and less profitable to the bank. How could the bank find new, sustainable growth, in a category where Aussies loathe, or at best, are apathetic to their banks? ING trusted the value of brand power and herein lied their solution. They relaunched their brand, and with this, their core business offering, increasing new customer value by 75% and increasing our NPS to 6x the category average.

Case Summary

Before KFC’s Crazy Thursday campaign, no one has ever imaged such a simple promotion could be turned into a weekly online crazy festival. By leveraging the insight that every Thursday has already become a cathartic release for many young people, KFC rode on and amplified crazy stories drafted by youths to make crazy story creation a ritual for every Thursday. As a result, the brand successfully broke the homogenous promotion competition and won a ten-fold increase in monthly average exposure.

Case Summary

As New Zealanders grapple with the cost-of-living crisis, The Wellington City Mission have experienced a fourfold increase in demand for services — spiking with the pressure of Christmas. To generate emergency fundraising we staged ‘The Silent Night’, a crowd-less event that channelled Wellingtonians’ goodwill into tangible contributions to their community. The event was a sell-out, selling more tickets than the stadium’s seating capacity, raising over $350k in ticket sales, and bringing in first time donors. And because no one attended, 100% of the sales were donated to those in need.

Case Summary

Oreo faced an unexpected challenge of aging excessive stocks when anticipating a high demand at the start of the year due to possible new pandemic wave. With Stay Playful spirit at heart, we found an opportunity to turn gloomy stocks stacked at retailer’s stores into joyful cookies stacked at consumer’s homes with a modest budget. Just by adding a value exchange twist into a simple stacking challenge, the campaign saw thousands of consumers joyfully stacking non-stop, stocks cleared up, sell out uplift +17.7%, penetration +1% and a Guinness Record at the end.

Case Summary

KFC Australia created a fine-dining degustation experience with 11 courses, using the food we sell in restaurant every single day. We knew that giving our food such a cheeky, fancy and over-the-top treatment - then targeting food critics, influencers and foodie-publications - would ensure the campaign amassed a huge amount of PR coverage, which successfully lifted KFC’s food quality perceptions.

Case Summary

How does a brand that’s reached category leadership via innovation and original style, sustain its price premium in the face of all-powerful discount-seeking e-commerce algorithms? In the case of Chinese girls’ fashion brand BalaBala, the breakthrough was in building a more direct relationship with its dual audience of girls, the look-conscious wearers, and their value- and safety-conscious mums. GuYu, China’s first age-appropriate virtual influencer, was activated across online and offline events, to help BalaBala increase WeChat membership by 25%, average transaction value by 14%, and overall sales value by 30%.

Case Summary

Turning Traditional Culture into modern art-vertisements. The traditional Chinese Calligraphy art is well appreciated by the Chinese affluent banking customers. It is an art that is traditionally used to impart wisdom. RHB had taken a bold step to be the first bank in Malaysia to collaborate with Ong Chia Koon, a renowned Chinese Calligraphy artist, and Jaemy Choong, a talented young designer, to produce masterpieces that cleverly turned to Art-vertisements.

Case Summary

New Zealand is one of the most under-insured countries in the world for life insurance. To tackle this, we partnered up with NZ’s most popular ‘murder mystery’ TV show – The Brokenwood Mysteries. In an partnership that pushed the boundaries of what was possible with a media integration, we brought the murdered characters back from the dead for one last performance that challenged Kiwis to rethink preconceptions around life insurance. This inventive use of television, captured the attention of NZ and got the nation more interested in life insurance.

Case Summary

Vietnam is Southeast Asia’s fastest growing digital economy but even amidst an unprecedented e-commerce boom, 14 million rural farmers (representing 1 in 5 Vietnamese adults) are held back from prospering by a broken supply-chain where up to 45 percent of fresh fruit and vegetables harvested perish before reaching anyone’s table. GRABCONNECT helped to connect ‘digitally outcast’ farmers to Grab’s vast network of merchants and app users, helping to build a stronger supply ecosystem for online groceries in Vietnam, and saving more than 400 tons of fruit losses in the process.

Case Summary

As New Zealanders grapple with the cost-of-living crisis, The Wellington City Mission have experienced a fourfold increase in demand for services — spiking with the pressure of Christmas. To generate emergency fundraising we staged ‘The Silent Night’, a crowd-less event that channelled Wellingtonians’ goodwill into tangible contributions to their community. The event was a sell-out, selling more tickets than the stadium’s seating capacity, raising over $350k in ticket sales, and bringing in first time donors. And because no one attended, 100% of the sales were donated to those in need.

Case Summary

KFC’s Left-Handed Menu was designed to surprise new and existing customers with mouth-watering, scarce and, quite frankly, absurd menu items. The retail calendar in the QSR category in Australia is wildly cluttered with offers that it’s hard to stand-out. More often than not, KFC is drowned out. So, to achieve that all-important marketing objective of attention, KFC decided to have fun and not take itself - or its retail menu - too seriously. The result? The attention, acquisition, retention and, above all, sales, that every brand in the category wants.

Case Summary

Humans are the worst. Especially when it comes to online dating. Unwanted slides into your DMs, being ghosted, unsolicited pics; you name it we have to put up with it. So, to launch our Tinder-esk cat adoption platform MyHooman, rather than telling people to adopt a furry friend, we told them to ‘Give up on humans’. By celebrating the disappointment of dating apps we helped people find their perfect match - and have seen a massive 76% uplift in return. And there’s not a liar or catfish in sight.

Case Summary

Purpose wasn’t invented 3 years ago or just for the Cannes Awards. It wasn’t ever meant for flash-in-the-pan do-good stunts. In a world where the essence of brand purpose has been diluted with woke-washing and a belief that only Gen-Z kids care about the ‘values economy’, Brooke Bond Red Label’s purpose-led communication is a lighthouse in how purpose-led marketing can help drive long-term growth & profits. This case demonstrates how Red Label’s ‘Taste of Togetherness’ reactivated the power of a humble cup of tea to regain market leadership.

Case Summary

Business was humming, but our brand was not. Our communications were the weak link in a winning team, failing to deliver strong returns. To kickstart our brand we needed to find a distinct point of view. Speaking to Aussies we discovered Macca’s wasn’t just a nickname, it’s a symbol of pride in a global brand Aussies feel like they’ve made their own. So we became Macca’s and not just McDonald’s, taking the Macca’s ethos into all our communications. By doing this we doubled, yes DOUBLED our return on marketing spend.

Case Summary

‘Love Your Gut’ by Dutchie Yoghurt proved to drive a bigger purpose on the most overlooked health, the Gut Health, admist the rising trend of functional food. The campaign strategically makes the matter easy to digest by ‘metaphor-ing’ how we take care of Gut to the familiar behavior of e-commerce… a delivery that never arrives. In the end, a new health agenda of ‘loving your gut before anything’ was formed, with outstanding results of surpassing KPI by 56% and closing the gap by turning from an irrelevant flavorful snack to functional food.