Best CTV Campaign

Match & Wood

"The Bedroom Binge", Snooze

From its very first store to 81 locally owned franchises today, Snooze has been a beloved part of Aussie homes for nearly half a century. But while its product range had evolved to capture a new generation, its communications had not.

Match & Wood's challenge was to ensure the “succession of Snooze” as the bedding retailer of choice among young families. Connected TV (CTV) offered a unique opportunity to communicate to the brand's core demo of 25-49-year-olds who over-index across all streaming platforms. And BINGE, with its recent introduction of advertising, represented the perfect platform. Coincidentally, research has shown that almost three-quarters of Aussies watch TV before heading to bed, with two in three saying it’s the only way to keep up with their favourite shows.

It appeared that the relationship between the bedroom and the binge had never been stronger, with CTV as the catalyst. Match & Wood developed a three-pronged approach to reach its audience:

1. Attaching Snooze to tentpole moments. As an exclusive BINGE advertising launch partner, Match & Wood aligned the campaign with the finale of The Last of Us – because the best place to hide from zombie mushroom humans is the comfort of your bed.
2. Amplifying Snooze across all major BVOD platforms including 7plus, 9Now and 10 play. The agency paired household frequency caps and incremental reach optimisations delivered via Samba TV to ensure it amplified the bedroom binge, not interrupt it.
3. Activate Snooze by taking the partnership out of the bedroom and into the showroom. Snooze became the first retailer to offer BINGE subscriptions at checkout as an incentive to drive membership and conversion.

The result? Both brand and sales metrics exploded.

Best Digital Campaign

CHEP Network

"Flipvertising", Samsung

How do you turn branded content into a game that GenZ, the most ad-sceptical generation, wants to play? By using data and retargeting creatively. That’s the story of Flipvertising.

CHEP noticed growing conversations on Reddit and other platforms about how to avoid or subvert them and the team used this insight into emerging behaviour to power an entirely new style of data-driven direct advertising that hit the zeitgeist.

By ‘flipping’ the traditional targeted advertising model on its head, CHEP created a competitive ‘internet sport’ where punters actively sought to get targeted by Samsung ads to win the new Galaxy Z Flip4 phone. To find the winning ad, clue-hunters searched for three specific terms via Google that linked to films produced by CHEP.

At first glance, each film was an amusing product demo, but also contained a clue hinting at the next search term to enter the retargeting pool. Anyone who watched all three films went into the final retargeting pool and was served the winning ad as a YouTube pre-roll.

The first person to find the ad every day won a new Galaxy Z Flip4. With such a technical, data-led execution, understanding the impact of extremely small targeting pools while ensuring the data integrity and technical requirements was a feat of data engineering. Through a campaign built on knowledge of ad targeting, CHEP executed very differently from the norm and allowed the audience to experience more content than any traditional targeted campaign could ever have achieved.

Best Direct Response Campaign

WiredCo. & The Agency Hut

"Digitally Hacking Australia's Superbowl", Pizza Hut

WiredCo. and Pizza Hut's in-house agency, The Agency Hut, digitally hacked Australia’s biggest sporting event and delivered the pizza chain's best sales month ever.

For brands, there’s something awesomely attractive, yet fierce about the State of Origin. After all, it’s Australia’s Super Bowl. But winning eyeballs is hard.

WiredCo. and The Agency Hut created a campaign to take advantage of Aussie's fierce state loyalty to create Sauce of Origin. It asked fans to order pizzas and pick from a free blue or maroon sauce to back their team.

Using real-time customer data, it created a digital scoreboard to reflect which sauce was garnering the most votes. It even gave punters a Sauce of Origin AI game to play on the back of their pizza boxes. This campaign drove consistent results across the six weeks around the State of Origin, not just on game nights.

Best Integrated Ad Campaign

Special

"Get Almost, Almost Anything", Uber Eats

Uber Eats is growing, with the brand expanding its delivery offering beyond takeaway food to groceries, alcohol, convenience products and more. For several years, the hugely successful "Tonight, I’ll be eating ..." campaign helped Uber skyrocket from fourth in the market to the industry frontrunner.

But the business needed a change, so Uber pivoted its brand marketing to reflect a new ambition. The brief to Special was to develop a new, culturally resonant brand campaign to demonstrate that consumers could now get so much more than takeaway food on the app.

“Get Almost, Almost Anything” was launched in partnership with Special. Partnering with several big-name celebrities, including The Kardashians, Nicola Coughlan and Tom Felton, the campaign explored the chaos that would unfold if Uber Eats was actually able to deliver everything.

Accompanying the video campaign was a series of out of home billboards featuring what could and couldn’t be obtained using the Uber Eats app. In just a few short months after the campaign launched, the self-deprecating brand admission has been a massive success for Uber Eats.

Best Media Campaign

Special

"The Last Performance", Partners Life

Just 29 per cent of Kiwis have life insurance, suggesting to Partners Life and Special that traditional advertising simply wasn’t getting the message across. So, they set out to do something radically different; they decided to activate where people were already engaging with death.

In every episode of New Zealand’s favourite murder mystery, The Brokenwood Mysteries, someone dies. Special saw an opportunity to turn the program into an ad for life insurance. “The Last Performance” brought murdered characters back from the dead to share their regrets about not getting life insurance. Using the same actors, director, crew and sets, Special created an all-in-one content partnership, media-hijacking, product placement and good old-fashioned testimonial that challenged New Zealand’s preconceptions of life insurance.

All six episodes offered unique insights into the consequences of the characters' unexpected deaths that reflected their lives and reminded New Zealanders that life isn’t scripted. The campaign reached more than half of Kiwis, with huge bumps in category interest, brand awareness and brand consideration. “The Last Performance” captured the attention of New Zealand, actively engaging a once apathetic audience.

Best Media Platform

Man of Many

Man of Many (MoM) is Australia’s largest men's lifestyle site. The standout media platform showcases consistent commercial success, a dramatic influence on its market and excellent value as an advertising vehicle. Over the last 12 months, it has seen incredible progress.

Its revenue has seen remarkable growth over the last year, driven in large part by its continued subscriber loyalty. What's more, the platform has seen impressive social growth and record engagement, highlighted by the launch of its TikTok platform. Over the past year, MoM has executed more than 200 advertising campaigns, including collaborations with high-profile brands. Plus with its content production studio, MoM has created original campaigns that received international acclaim and generated significant sales.

If that weren't enough, MoM is Australia's first 100 per cent carbon-neutral publisher and recently celebrated a decade of independent publishing.

Best Out of Home Campaign

Universal Pictures Australia

"Barbie"

Universal Pictures created the “Barbie” Out of Home campaign with the ambition to have the number-one opening of all time for a female-driven film in Australia.

Universal's campaign worked with Barbie achieving the biggest box office opening of 2023 by 50 per cent. Barbie had high brand awareness, but the challenge was converting awareness to interest in the film and ticket sales. Universal also needed to overcome the perception this was a kid’s film and firmly establish Barbie as a must-see blockbuster for all audiences.

The team needed to engage and excite audiences by bringing Barbie Land into the real world for the first time, leveraging nostalgia for the brand and using its distinct cues to showcase Barbie's iconic aesthetic with a modern twist. From here, a bold Out of Home campaign was developed to disrupt Australian winter and paint the country pink. The “Paint Australia Pink” creative strategy firmly positioned Barbie as an entertaining theatrical event worth celebrating. Utilising unique, iconic and showstopping formats with customised artwork, the campaign created a memorable experience for audiences across Australia.

The outdoor strategy attracted significant attention and ignited social platforms as audiences became eager to engage in the Barbie spectacle. The customised out of home formats were shareable, with film hype exploding off the back of the Barbie At Bondi activation, not only in Australia but around the world.

Best PR Campaign

The Monkeys, part of Accenture Song

"England Bitter", VB

From the moment Alex Carey whipped Johnny Bairstow’s bails off, 'Stumpgate' became the most talked about cricket moment in recent memory. And, if you’re English, one of the most whinged about.

In fact, they were so cranky they went as far as refusing to have a beer with the Australian team after the series. As an advocate for the Aussie values of putting your head down and getting the job done, VB wasn’t standing for this attitude. So, in a PR stunt that will go down in the history books, VB and The Monkeys created “England Bitter”, a beer to match the bitterness of an entire nation. Within 48 hours, they had shipped a warm slab of "England Bitter" directly to the English team’s dressing rooms in Leeds, addressed directly to Ben Stokes and his bitter mates. The PR response was immediate, with all major news outlets in Australia picking up the story.

Karl Stefanovic opened a stubby with his teeth live on air and even the notoriously ad-free ABC devoted a whole minute of airtime to VB. But that wasn’t enough for VB and The Monkeys, who poked the bear further by running full-page press ads in England’s daily papers, handing out beers on the ground and dressing an army of spectators in England Bitter T-shirts. In just three days, England Bitter generated over 23.5 million impressions and $4.5 million worth of earned media. Organic social engagement levels were the highest in VB’s history, too.

Best Radio/ Audio Campaign

Amplify

"Frisson Trigger", Sonos

Sonos tasked Amplify to create a campaign that would sustain cultural conversation around Era 300, the brand’s newly launched spatial audio speaker. The campaign had to celebrate the expressive power of sound, reinforce the brand’s credibility in music and reignite its innovation narrative.

Sometimes a piece of music connects so deeply that we feel a physical sensation, a “frisson” — a psychophysiological response that induces a pleasurable state resulting in skin tingling, chills, goosebumps, an elevated heart rate and pupil dilation. Composed and mixed by Grammy-winning producer and spatial audio expert Eric J Dubowsky in collaboration with academic experts, “Frisson Trigger” is loaded with sounds scientifically proven to induce frisson. Mixed in Dolby Atmos using innovative spatial audio techniques, the track immerses listeners in the music, enveloping them entirely in high-quality sound.

The story was shared through the release of the track, online content and a media and influencer event that included a purpose-built listening space featuring the ultimate, immersive Sonos spatial audio setup. The campaign reached nearly five million people, with The New York Times describing it as “an emotional odyssey that showcases the potential of spatial audio innovation”.

Best Regional Media Campaign

Thinkerbell

"Postcodes of Origin", XXXX

XXXX has a long legacy to Queensland communities, including a 33-year-long sponsorship with Queensland Rugby League (QRL) and the Maroons team in State of Origin (SOO). Queensland is vast but most of its inhabitants live in regional areas. Despite this, XXXX and Thinkerbell saw an opportunity to unite communities and win back their heartland through footy, beer and pride.

To reignite Queenslanders’ passion for the brand, the iconic XXXX logo on the Maroons' jersey sleeve was sacrificed and replaced with Queensland postcodes in a powerful demonstration of pride. The postcodes represented players’ junior rugby clubs, the regions where their passion for Queensland began.

To include and unite all 447 Queensland postcodes, XXXX boldly changed its beer can design, swapping branding for numbers. Thirty million special edition cans were released so every Queenslander could create and share their postcode for the chance to win $25,000 or a holiday with Maroons players. XXXX used postcodes as a targeting tactic to reclaim key sales areas in Queensland, including contextual BVOD, TV, digital and social that featured the specific postcode in every placement. XXXX’s hyper-targeted regional media buy saw specifically researched and crafted ads delivered by XXXX and Maroons players.

The campaign received huge press coverage, with a combined reach of almost 20 million people with complete positive sentiment. More than 7,000 Queenslanders entered the competition and XXXX sales saw a significant jump.

This campaign saw additional support from UM Australia as the media partner and Affinity as the digital agency partner.

Best TV Campaign

Special

"The Last Performance", Partners Life

Only 29 per cent of New Zealanders have life insurance, and traditional advertising isn’t a motivating factor in swaying Kiwis to get it. New Zealand life insurance provider Partners Life sought to do something radically different. Working with Special, it decided to activate where people were already engaging with death. “The Last Performance” turned NZ's favourite murder mystery TV show into an ad for life insurance.

In every episode of The Brokenwood Mysteries, a character dies. So, at the end of every episode, Special brought these murdered characters back from the dead to share their regrets about not getting life insurance. Using the same actors, director, crew and sets, they created an all-in-one content partnership, media-hijacking, product placement, and good old-fashioned testimonial that challenged NZ’s preconceptions of life insurance. All six episodes featured a unique look into the unexpected consequences of the characters' deaths based on their lives in the show to remind Kiwis that life isn’t scripted.

The message reached more than half of New Zealanders; and the campaign was hugely effective with category interest, brand awareness and brand consideration seeing significant increases. “The Last Performance” captured the attention of New Zealand and turned a nation apathetic to life insurance, into one actively engaged with it.

Best Use of Social Media

CHEP Network

"(un)Geddes", Karicare

In a category where it’s impossible to stand out, baby formula brand Karicare needed to connect with new parents to turn around a year-long flatlining market share. So, they partnered with CHEP Network, interviewing families to help better understand the lives of real parents.

They found that social media had become the new mother’s group, discovering that 96 per cent of Australian parents feel under pressure to be perfect, and 61 per cent feel bad when they see ‘perfect’ images. Karicare set out on a mission to redefine how society portrays parenting. The idea closed the gap between the ‘real’ moments parents experience and the curated ones presented online. This worked in three parts: Show parents that the ‘perfect’ portrayal of parenting they see daily is an illusion. Give parents and influencers who never share less-than-perfect images the confidence to #FeedTheReal, and rebalance the disparity between perfect and authentic on social feeds around Australia.

To spark a broader conversation, they partnered with Anne Geddes, creating a powerful story to fuel the mission further. Together, this worked to show parents that real can be perfect too. “(un)Geddes” hit a cultural nerve in a traditional category, achieving 52m+ reach with 60+ pieces of media coverage and record market share at 14.8 per cent.

Best Use of Sponsorship

Initiative Australia

"Cricket Covers", NRMA Insurance

Last year, NRMA Insurance became the naming rights sponsor of Australian Test Cricket, but it recognised that to connect with fans, it’s essential for brands to add value to sports rather than simply sponsoring the code and resorting to excessive logo slapping.

Historical weather data interrogation uncovered that, while Australian cricket is synonymous with the sun, the most-watched iconic Sydney Test is consistently the most washed-out. Lousy weather had the potential to increase the risk of sponsorship washout. Cricket is a game where conditions count. The pitch is the literal heart of the match, a living and ever-evolving element that, over five days of play, changes dramatically to challenge bowlers and batters alike continuously.

Protecting the pitch is critical to the integrity of the game, resulting in the rollout of weatherproof covers at the first hint of rain. Yet despite their significance and century-long use, their giant plain white design has never been altered. With that revelation, NRMA with Initiative transformed the most untapped media asset in professional sport into a new distinctive media device, one that acted as a powerful manifestation of NRMA's commitment to HELP.

Bigger than any billboard in Australia, this new out-of-home channel delivered unrivalled cultural visibility, ensuring inclement weather didn't ‘washout’ NRMA's sponsorship but strengthened it. This campaign proves the power of finding exciting and differentiated ways to reinforce NRMA Insurance’s brand purpose and, through a media-led idea, helped create disproportionate fan and cultural attention.

Best Use of Tech

AKQA

"Never Done Evolving", Nike

AKQA worked with Nike to travel back in time to create a match-up between Serena Williams from her first Grand Slam win at the 1999 US Open and her most recent at the 2017 Australian Open.

The goal was to gain insight into how Williams got to where she is today and how she keeps challenging the future. AKQA utilised machine learning to model Williams’ unique playing style during these two eras. Archival footage was analysed to replicate her decision-making, shot selection, reactivity, agility and recovery.

AKQA used a technique adapted from Stanford University’s ‘vid2player’ system to animate these models, crafting a compelling new scenario where two versions of Williams played against each other. The matches are a step towards a future of sports analytics expressed in a more intuitive format.

They provide a fresh, engaging medium for experts and fans to understand and interpret data and to discover new insight into how Williams became and sustained her status as the greatest of all time. On 9 August 2022, Serena Williams announced her retirement from tennis. Two days later, after keeping it a secret for years, Nike released “Never Done Evolving”. The campaign is more than a tribute and more than a study in the form of avatars. It's the most accurate and detailed virtualisation ever done with an athlete.

Best Video Campaign

CHEP Network

"The Jewellers", Michael Hill

Michael Hill is undoubtedly a household name, but it was stuck. It had become a slave to the cadence of the retail calendar. Its focus on price promotion and discounting was undermining margins and eroding brand perceptions. In short, its growth had flatlined. The brand had become a fatigued and styleless "mass retailer".

The brand had lost its romance, a problem when one of its most profitable products was engagement rings. The campaign, created by CHEP Network, is a true story about how returning to a brand’s truth, married with real customer insight, helped ignite a flame that had almost been extinguished. The campaign was shared widely, a moving display that captured hearts and reminded consumers of the passion that lies beneath the Michael Hill brand. Seducing a brand new customer segment, the campaign helped deliver huge net profits as well as. significant bumps in bridal sales and global store visits.