This category recognises the best advertising campaign or individual spot which engaged the target audience through strong creative thinking and media use to achieve a specific marketing outcome or result.

Judges will be looking for a clear demonstration of how the creative concept was executed across chosen platforms to resonate with the intended audience. Entrants are encouraged to highlight the strategic use of media – whether traditional, digital or a hybrid approach – and how this synergy contributed to the overall effectiveness and success of the campaign.

Whether it’s the first, 25th or even the 100th year of a company’s existence, anniversaries are important milestones that provide the perfect opportunity to drum up excitement, awareness, and engagement. This category recognises the campaigns that took full advantage of a business’ anniversary to create a positive buzz and grow its market share.

Judges will be assessing the overall strategy and impact of the anniversary component on the success of the campaign. Where possible, demonstrate how the anniversary element led to a more successful and effective outcome towards the campaign and its business objectives.

This category recognises outstanding brand strategies demonstrated through a campaign or marketing initiative that successfully reinforced the brand’s identity and connection with its target audience. Entrants are encouraged to outline how their brand strategy was developed, executed, and aligned with the overarching business goals.

Judges will look for strategies that showcased innovation, creativity, and impact, with the option to include the use of AI-driven tools or techniques, such as analytics or personalization, to enhance the strategy.

This category recognises the creation of outstanding branded content that was innovative, original, and impactful. Eligible entries should include text, infographics, film, video games, music, digital experiences, competitions, and television – across any marketing channel.

Judges will look for content that broke new ground, captured attention, and meaningfully engaged the target audience. Entries should demonstrate how the content elevated brand presence and drove measurable audience interaction.

This category recognises outstanding content-driven marketing strategies that effectively engaged, informed, and inspired their target audiences. Judges will be looking for entries that demonstrated a clear vision for integrating content into the overall marketing plan. Entries should show how the content initiatives contributed to significant growth in brand awareness and played a pivotal role in achieving marketing objectives.

This category recognises the best marketing campaign, initiative or programme that addressed social, economic or environmental issues on behalf of the organisation. Judges will be looking at how the initiative raised awareness and encouraged social change to bring positive effects and outcomes for society, and the involved parties, while simultaneously raising brand reputation.

This category recognises an outstanding creative design that played a central role in shaping a product’s brand identity. The design may include product packaging, premiums, POSM, marketing collateral or in-store design. Judges will look for submissions that clearly connected the design concept to the broader marketing strategy, while demonstrating how the creative execution enhanced the product’s market impact and brand recognition.

This category recognises the best campaign, initiative or programme that engaged new or existing customers to emotionally connect with the brand through smart and relevant communications. Judges will be looking for effective engagement strategies that went beyond advertisements and which encouraged consumers to actively interact with the brand to generate positive business outcomes.

This category recognises the best campaign, initiative or programme that demonstrated a customer-centric approach, giving consumers a seamless and intuitive experience. Judges will be looking at how the project was carefully developed with the customer in mind, and the ease of how the targeted audience was able to interact with the brand or respond to a call to action without a hitch.

This category recognises the best marketing campaign, initiative or programme that drew unique insights from effective business insights, research, data planning, measurement and analytics tools or database developments to drive the brand’s core business objectives. Judges will be looking at how the brand used that data in a campaign to understand its customers and their behaviours.

This category recognises the best marketing campaign, initiative or programme that used digital channels such as the web, social media, mobile or email to deliver an engaging consumer experience while successfully driving core business objectives. Judges will be looking at how the campaign stood out in the competitive digital space to achieve a specific marketing outcome, be it branding or prompted consumer engagement.

This category recognises organisations that have harnessed the power of live, virtual or hybrid events to achieve defined marketing objectives. Entries can include events of any size or scope. Judges will evaluate the effectiveness of the event execution, the level of audience engagement, and the strength and originality of the event concept.

This category recognises an organisation that best used a hands-on brand experience to take the target audience inside a brand or product through an innovative or creative idea. Entries can be anything from a mass-market launch to a smaller and more exclusive experience for customers. Judges will be looking at how the campaign was created and implemented to allow consumers to get involved in, feel, enjoy or respond to a specific experience.

This category recognises the most outstanding and refreshing partnerships involving influencers and brands in a campaign. The campaign should show evidence of how the influencers were used effectively within a marketing campaign to enhance awareness and to successfully achieve business objectives. Judges will be looking at how the partnership helped the brand to engage and delight the target audience, resulting in an increase of the brand’s awareness, which generated benefits for both parties.

This category recognises an organisation that most effectively engaged its consumer markets through an integrated marketing strategy, which employed a suite of marketing tools and media channels (at least five channels) to drive core business objectives. Judges will be looking at how the unified and seamless integrated experience innovatively and effectively promoted a brand, product or service while achieving a positive marketing outcome.

This category recognises exceptional marketing strategies supporting the launch of a new product or the rebranding of an existing brand. Judges will evaluate the creativity and effectiveness of the campaign, as well as its measurable impact on the product, brand or organisation’s overall success.

This category recognises the most outstanding marketing campaign in the lifestyle and entertainment sector that captivated audiences through exceptional creative thinking and strategic media use.

Entrants should demonstrate how their campaign achieved its marketing goals while establishing strong brand differentiation and cultural influence – whether through trendsetting, reflecting societal values or creating lasting impact. Judges will assess the campaign’s creativity, execution, and results, as well as its effectiveness in positioning the brand as a leader in lifestyle and entertainment.

This category recognises the organisation that best used events or a specific event targeted to the mass public to reach a specified marketing outcome. The campaign can be offline, online or hybrid. Judges will be looking for events that created a positive brand experience for the mass public and left a lingering impact on the audience.

This category recognises the organisation that best utilised media channels as their key strategic tool to execute a powerful marketing campaign, while driving core business objectives. Judges will be looking at how the effective use of media channels engaged the targeted customers and ultimately boosted business performance.

This category recognises the most effective approaches to omnichannel marketing, including how the entire customer experience was aligned across all touchpoints to drive a customer-centric experience. Judges will be evaluating the effectiveness and results of the campaign. Entries should demonstrate how the use of omnichannel marketing increased conversion rates and helped meet campaign and business objectives.

This category recognises advertising campaigns that utilised the out-of-home (OOH) medium in a way that was innovative, creative, and successful in raising brand awareness. The OOH can include media such as billboards, digital billboards, digital screens, transit media, and mobile platforms designed for an OOH audience, or any other media that targeted audiences outside the home environment. Judges will be looking at how the use of the OOH strategy was planned and executed.

This category recognises the organisation that best developed and activated a brand-relevant partnership in the form of a crossover, sponsorship or product placement. Judges will be looking at how the partnership/sponsorship reached a mutual benefit for the involved parties and delivered strong business returns.

This category recognises the best marketing campaign, initiative or programme that maximised performance and attained the desired business objectives. Judges will be looking at how the campaign optimised the performance, which includes, but is not limited to, an increase in customer engagement, the raising of the brand’s awareness, and a better ROI.

This category recognises the organisation that best used programmatic strategies and solutions to optimise a campaign and enhance the targeting to a specific audience. Judges will be looking at how the programmatic strategy specifically improved the campaign’s success and helped achieve business objectives.

This category recognises the organisation that best enhanced its corporate branding, image or identity with consumers and other internal stakeholders through an effective implementation of strategic communications to deliver core business objectives. Judges will be looking at how the campaign managed the brand’s reputation, promoted brand values, and strengthened communications with the target audiences.

This category recognises organisations that successfully executed a campaign, initiative or programme aimed at engaging and attracting customers through methods such as sampling, competitions, couponing, POSM displays, in-store promotions, eCommerce strategies or other retail environments.

Winning entries should demonstrate how these efforts effectively converted customer engagement into purchases of the featured product(s). Judges will be looking at how the brand delivered a unique shopping experience which contributed to achieving its business objectives.

This category recognises the best campaign, initiative or programme that optimised social media channels to build strong relationships with customers, recruit new customers or engage existing customers, while driving core business objectives. This can be a one-off campaign or a long-term strategy.

Judges will be looking at how the campaign innovatively and effectively communicated with the audience, drove customer engagement, and obtained the business objectives.

This category recognises the organisation that best used events or a specific event dedicated to a targeted audience (for example, age, gender, demographic) to achieve a specified marketing outcome. Judges will be looking for events that created a positive brand experience for the targeted audience and left a lingering impact on the audience.

This category celebrates marketing campaigns that strategically leveraged technology as a core driver of marketing effectiveness, customer experience or business results. Entrants should demonstrate how the digital innovations – such as AI, augmented and virtual reality, advanced data analytics, automation, martech platforms or personalised systems – were thoughtfully integrated into the marketing strategy to address specific challenges and unlock new opportunities, rather than as surface-level enhancements.

Judges will be looking for the clarity of the objectives; the intelligent and original application of the technology; and tangible results such as improved engagement, efficiency, conversion, personalisation or commercial performance. 

This category recognises the most effective and innovative use of an online video to achieve a specific marketing outcome, be it branding or a call to action. Judges will be looking at the creativity behind how the video helped raise brand awareness, and how it drove customer engagement and delivered on the intended marketing goals.

This category recognises campaigns that successfully created highly shareable content, and generated widespread awareness and engagement through organic word-of-mouth and social sharing. Entrants should demonstrate how their viral marketing efforts captivated audiences, sparked conversations, and achieved significant brand visibility by surpassing traditional marketing channels. Successful examples should highlight creativity, relevance, and the ability to quickly capture and hold the public’s attention.

This category recognises outstanding leadership and excellence from a brand-side chief marketing officer/head of marketing unit or marketing leader who has made a significant impact to their brand’s overall advertising/marketing output.

Entrants can nominate themselves or others. They should show achievements against objectives, and evidence of business impact in the following areas within the eligibility period:

• Creativity, innovation, and the ability to pivot quickly and effectively.
• Strategic, out-of-the-box thinking.
• Excellent execution examples that helped manage cash flow for optimum business health.
• New business or the creation of new business opportunities/new markets, etc.
• Stability of the organisation’s business performance.
• Unquestionable leadership, motivation, and support for their teams.
• Any other exceptional action, achievement or work that especially merits this award. Testimonials are welcomed.

This category recognises outstanding work from a single client-side marketing team which has made a significant impact to their brand/organisation’s overall marketing campaigns, executions, and results.

Entrants can use one particular campaign as a case study of evidence to form their entry or can use aspects from various projects, but all work must have taken place within the eligibility period, and they must show evidence of:

• Outstanding achievements in campaigns and project management.
• Creativity and innovation.
• Strategic thinking.
• Excellent planning and execution.
• Successful results against objectives/KPIs.
• Any other exceptional achievements or work that especially merits this award. Testimonials are welcomed.

This category is not open for direct entry. It recognises the brand that performs best at the Marketing Excellence Awards 2025, based solely on the number and types of awards won, as determined by the awards jury.

Points System:

• Gold: 4 points
• Silver: 2 points
• Bronze: 1 point

Tie-Breakers:

• Most Gold: If total points are tied, the brand with the highest number of Gold awards wins.
• Most Silver: If Gold awards are also tied, the brand with the highest number of Silver awards wins.
• Highest Average Score: If a tie still persists, the brand with the highest average score percentage (as assigned by the judges across all their winning entries) will win.