Award Categories

1. Excellence in Advertising

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.

2. Excellence in AI-Powered Storytelling

This category recognises marketing campaigns that leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to create captivating and personalised brand narratives. Whether through chatbots, predictive content, or AI-driven recommendations, these campaigns demonstrate a mastery of technology to connect with consumers on a deeper, more individual level. Entrants should showcase how AI was instrumental in tailoring storytelling and message delivery.

3. Excellence in Anniversary Marketing

Whether it’s the 1^st 25^th or even 100^th 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 take full advantage of the business’ anniversary to make positive buzz and grow their market share.

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

4. Excellence in B2B Marketing

This category recognises the increasingly creative methods used to reach B2B audiences. This category encompasses all advertising; branding, marketing, and communications work for B2B brands and can include a one-off or on-going campaign.

5. Excellence in Brand Awareness

This category recognises the best marketing campaign or initiative that successfully increased recollection for a firm’s products or services amongst target audiences. The initiatives can include both above the line and below the line activities.

6. Excellence in Brand Strategy

This category recognises the best brand strategy as reflected in a campaign or any marketing initiative. Entrants are reminded to expand on how the brand strategy took shape and the results it saw.

7. Excellence in Communications / Public Relations

This category recognises the organisation that has best enhanced its corporate branding, image or identity with the consumer public, other businesses, or internal stakeholders through effective implementation of strategic communication to deliver core business objectives.

8. Excellence in Consumer Insights / Market Research

This category recognises organisations that have effectively leveraged research, data analytics, or database development to uncover pivotal consumer insights that directly shaped a campaign, initiative, or communication.

An example of a potential entry could be like that of how an instant noodle brand leveraged local market research to develop new flavours that resonated with regional preferences, leading to a successful product launch with 15% higher-than-expected sales.

9. Excellence in Content Marketing

This category recognises campaigns that effectively use content to engage, inform, and inspire their target audience. Entrants should demonstrate how their content strategy drives brand awareness, customer engagement, and business results. Examples include blogs, videos, social media posts, and other digital content that provide value to consumers while aligning with the brand’s overall objectives.

10. Excellence in CSR / Cause Marketing

This category recognises the best marketing campaign, initiative, or programme by an organisation for a charity or cause the organisation had a partnership or association with. The organisation should be able to prove the initiative benefited both parties and had positive effects and outcomes for society or the cause.

11. Excellence in Customer Engagement

This category recognises a campaign, initiative or programme that successfully encouraged customers to emotionally connect with the brand. Judges will be looking for initiatives that went beyond advertisements to encourage consumers to actively participate in the brand’s programme.

12. Excellence in Data-Driven Marketing

This category recognises the best marketing campaign, initiative or programme that adopted innovative and effective business intelligence, data planning, measurement, and analytic tools to improve targeting whilst successfully driving the organisation’s core business objectives.

13. Excellence in Digital Marketing

This category recognises the best marketing campaign, initiative or programme that used digital channels such as web, mobile, email etc. to deliver an engaging consumer experience whilst successfully driving core business objectives.

14. Excellence in eCommerce Marketing

This category recognises the brand / marketplace that had an outstanding performance in the online selling of products, services, or information to end users. Entrants should illustrate the best innovative eCommerce strategy that successfully communicated a brand’s image, changed consumers’ behaviours and drive consumer traffic to the ecommerce platform. Judges will be looking at how the strategy was developed and how the online platform(s) were used in offering a unique online shopping experience and which helped to achieve brands’ business targets.

15. Excellence in Event Marketing

This category recognises the organisation that best used events as a key tool to increase brand awareness and customer engagement. Entries can be for small-scale events or large-scale events targeting the general public. This category is open to physical, virtual or hybrid event executions.

16. Excellence in Experiential Marketing

This category recognises the organisation that best implemented an experiential programme that allowed consumers to get involved in, feel, enjoy, or share in the brand experience. This should have translated into a positive perception of the brand for consumers.

17. Excellence in Gaming

This category recognises the best marketing campaign, initiative or event that utilises gamification or gaming to entertain consumers and to enhance the brand experience while driving core business objectives. The campaign can be carried out both online or a live gaming event.

18. Excellence in Influencer / KOLs Marketing

This category recognises the organisation that effectively used influencers within a marketing campaign to enhance awareness and successfully achieve business objectives. Influencers could include appropriate experts, ambassadors, bloggers or celebrities etc.

19. Excellence in Integrated Marketing

This category recognises the organisation that best engaged its target audience through an integrated marketing strategy. This strategy should have employed a suite of marketing tools and at least 3 media channels whilst successfully driving core business objectives.

20. Excellence in Interactive Marketing / AR & VR

This category recognises the best marketing campaign, initiative or event that successfully engaged consumers using entertaining and engaging content in the form of a game, competition, or other interactive media forms such as virtual and augmented reality. Judges will be looking for how an interactive solution enhanced the brand experience and drove business objectives. We welcome entries from sophisticated gaming, VR, AR, and related apps created by highly creative developers, agencies, and client marketers.

21. Excellence in Launch Marketing

This category recognises an exceptional marketing strategy to support the launch or re-launch of a brand, product, or service. Entries in this category should be able to demonstrate the impact this launch strategy had on the brand, product, service, or organisation’s success.

22. Excellence in Live-Streaming Marketing NEW

This category honours innovative campaigns that use live-streaming to engage audiences, build brand awareness, and achieve business goals. Entrants should showcase creativity, audience interaction, and effective use of live-streaming for events, launches, shopping, or other marketing initiatives.

Examples include product launches, live shopping events, educational streams, or interactive Q&A sessions that deliver real-time value and foster community engagement.

23. Excellence in Location-Based Marketing

This category recognises campaigns in Singapore that effectively use location-based services, geofencing, or proximity marketing to deliver personalised, location-specific content. Submissions should showcase innovative strategies that leverage location data to drive engagement, footfall, and conversions, demonstrating creativity, effectiveness, and meaningful consumer impact.

For example, a fast-food chain utilised real-time location data to adjust its online advertising spend, ensuring its ads were directed to customers based on their proximity to stores. This strategy significantly enhanced ad relevance and increased foot traffic to physical locations, illustrating the power of location-based marketing in driving consumer engagement.

24. Excellence in Loyalty Marketing

This category recognises the best campaign, initiative or programme that demonstrated a cohesive customer loyalty strategy and effective CRM programme to grow and retain existing customers through incentives whilst enhancing the customer proposition. It should also have encouraged greater spend, resulting in positive business outcomes.

25. Excellence in Marketing Innovation

This category recognises an organisation that has pushed the boundaries and demonstrated outstanding marketing innovation in a campaign, initiative, or programme, be it through the use of unconventional marketing techniques like guerrilla marketing, new technologies like augmented reality, or adapting limited resources to achieve specific marketing objectives.

26. Excellence in Marketing to a Specific Audience

This category recognises the best marketing campaign, initiative or programme aimed at a specific audience. This is not exclusive to a single audience but the majority of the target audience should be a specific demographic the campaign set out to approach. Specific audience bases could include gender, age group, interest groups (e.g. wellness, racing, esports etc.) and other profiled audiences. Entries should show why the specific audience was important and how the audience responded well.

27. Excellence in Marketing Transformation

This category recognises the organisation who best revamped a marketing team(s) to transform their marketing process and / or output. This could be a consultative project by an agency or a project conducted by in-house transformation team. Entrants should be able to demonstrate an effective transformation with minimal disruption and a positive impact on subsequent marketing campaign results.

28. Excellence in Media Strategy

This category recognises the organisation that best utilised media channels as their key strategic tool to execute a powerful marketing campaign while successfully driving core business objectives.

29. Excellence in Mobile Marketing

This category recognises the most effective and innovative use of mobile marketing. Campaigns could have included the use of apps and mobile as a media format, mobile app marketing and / or marketing and advertising through mobile and apps to achieve a specific marketing outcome, be it branding, a prompted consumer behaviour or simply increased consumption.

30. Excellence in Multilingual Marketing

This category recognises campaigns that have effectively implemented multilingual strategies to engage diverse consumer segments across different languages. Submissions should highlight how multilingual campaigns were adapted to cultural nuances, ensuring relevant and effective communication as well as measurable impacts (ie, increased reach, engagement, or conversions in multiple language markets)

An example of a potential entry could be similar to that of how an airline localised messaging in multiple regional languages, driving a 20% increase in bookings.

31. Excellence in Omnichannel

This category recognises the most effective approaches to omnichannel marketing, including how the entire customer experience was aligned across all touch points 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.

32. Excellence in Out-of-Home Advertising

This category recognises impactful out-of-home (OOH) campaigns that creatively and effectively engage audiences in public spaces. Submissions should focus on the innovative use of outdoor spaces, such as billboards, transit ads, and digital screens, to amplify brand presence.

An example of a potential entry could be like that of how an electronics company used eye-catching digital billboards showcased dynamic content to promote the phone’s features, boosting pre-orders by 30%.

33. Excellence in Performance Marketing

This category recognises the best performing marketing campaign, initiative, or programme. Campaigns entered into this category should be aimed at driving actions and response as opposed to simply raising awareness. Entries should demonstrate evidence of campaigns having been optimised in real time and remuneration to the relevant vendors and platforms should have been based on results delivered.

34. Excellence in Personalisation Marketing

This category recognises the best marketing campaign in perfecting the consumer journey and creates more personalised marketing or one-to-one marketing to deliver individualised content to recipients across channels, and buying stages. Entrants should illustrate the strategies to deliver value and expected experiences to customers. Judges will be looking at how the strategy was developed and how the organisations leverage omni-channel advertising to drive personalised customer experiences in real-time.

35. Excellence in Programmatic Marketing

This category recognises the organisation that best used programmatic strategies and solutions to optimise a campaign and greater enhance the targeting to a specific audience. Entrants should be able to demonstrate how the programmatic strategy specifically improved the campaign’s success and helped achieve business objectives.

36. Excellence in Relationship Marketing

This category recognises campaigns / strategies / programmes that focus on building long-term engagement. Judges will be looking for entries that go above and beyond intrusive advertising and sales messages and focus on enhancing loyalty through open communication and personalised messaging / offers.

37. Excellence in Search Marketing

This category recognises the most effective digital marketing campaigns that had search marketing at their core. Entries should cover campaigns that were geared for cross-channel search engine optimisation, including both desktop and mobile SEO.

38. Excellence in Social Media Marketing

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

39. Excellence in TV / Video Advertising

This category recognises the most creative, entertaining, and effective video advertisements. This category will cover both traditional television advertising as well as advertisements deployed on digital video platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo etc.

40. Excellence in Urban Guerrilla Marketing

This category celebrates guerrilla marketing campaigns that creatively utilise urban spaces to surprise and engage audiences in unexpected ways. Submissions should highlight innovative, attention-grabbing tactics that disrupt everyday environments in an unconventional manner.

An example of a potential entry could be like that of how an energy drink company used a high-impact stunt involving skydivers landing in the city centre, creating buzz, and increasing social media mentions by 50%.

41. Excellence in Viral Marketing

This category recognises the best campaign, initiative or programme that successfully captured its target audience and subsequently turned into a self-replicating viral process with its results meeting the organisation’s core business objectives.

42. Marketing Leader of the Year (Talent Category)

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 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

43. Marketing Team of the Year (Talent Category)

This category recognises outstanding work from a 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

44. Marketer of the Year (Not for Entry)

This category recognises the brand that performs best at the Marketing Excellence Awards 2025.

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.

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Core Submission Template