Award Categories

1. Excellence in Advertising

This category recognises the most outstanding advertising campaign or individual spot that has captivated its target audience through powerful storytelling, innovative creative execution, and strategic media placement. Entrants should demonstrate how their campaign delivered strong brand resonance, emotional connection, and measurable business impact. Whether through traditional, digital, or integrated channels, this category celebrates advertising that not only turns heads but drives real results.

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 1st 25th or even 100th 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 exceptional creativity and innovation in reaching and engaging business audiences. It celebrates outstanding advertising, branding, marketing, and communications efforts designed specifically for B2B brands. Entries may include one-off or ongoing campaigns that demonstrate strategic thinking, impactful messaging, and measurable success in building relationships, driving leads, or strengthening brand authority within the business ecosystem.
5. Excellence in Brand Awareness
This category honours the most effective marketing campaign or initiative that significantly elevated awareness, recall, and recognition of a brand, product, or service among its target audience. Entries should showcase how strategic messaging, creative execution, and a well-balanced mix of above-the-line and below-the-line activities worked together to leave a lasting brand impression and deliver tangible results.
6. Excellence in Brand Strategy
This category celebrates the most compelling and well-executed brand strategy demonstrated through a campaign or marketing initiative. Entrants should outline how the strategy was conceived, developed, and brought to life across channels, highlighting how it strengthened brand positioning, resonated with audiences, and contributed to overall business growth and long-term equity.
7. Excellence in Communications / Public Relations
This category recognises organisations that have effectively enhanced their corporate reputation, image, or identity through strategic communication and public relations. Whether targeting consumers, business partners, or internal stakeholders, entries should demonstrate strong storytelling, message alignment, and strategic execution that drove positive perception, trust, and business results.
8. Excellence in Consumer Insights / Market Research
This category honours the organisation that has most effectively leveraged research, data, or analytics to uncover actionable insights driving the success of a campaign, product, or communication strategy. Entries should highlight how insights were gathered, interpreted, and applied to inform decision-making, fuel creativity, and achieve meaningful impact on audience engagement or business performance.
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 Cultural Storytelling *NEW*
This category celebrates campaigns that powerfully capture the Filipino spirit through authentic, culturally resonant storytelling. Whether through language, humour, heritage, or shared values, these campaigns successfully connect with local audiences on a deeper emotional level. Judges will seek entries that reflect cultural intelligence, originality, and the ability to translate local insights into compelling, brand-elevating narratives.
12. Excellence in Customer Data Privacy Assurance

This category honours brand initiatives that ensure customer data is secure and handled responsibly, with minimal or no access granted to third parties. Entrants must demonstrate transparency and accountability, such as clearly outlining data protection measures in agreements or showcasing innovative approaches to safeguarding customer information. Examples include brands like Apple emphasising their commitment to privacy in products and communications.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. Excellence in Data Privacy and Security Marketing

This category celebrates campaigns that educate and empower consumers to protect themselves from scams, data breaches, and online fraud while also highlighting the importance of data privacy and cybersecurity. Entrants should demonstrate how their initiatives effectively raise awareness, provide practical tools or guidance, and reassure consumers about data protection in an increasingly digital world. Examples include campaigns by banks, tech companies, or public organisations that champion personal data security and fraud prevention.

16. Excellence in Digital Marketing
This category recognises the most outstanding marketing campaign, initiative, or programme that leveraged digital platforms — including web, mobile, social, email, and emerging technologies — to deliver an engaging and seamless consumer experience. Entrants should demonstrate how digital innovation, creative execution, and strategic use of data and technology effectively met core business objectives, strengthened brand engagement, and achieved measurable impact.
17. 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.

18. 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.

19. Excellence in Experiential Marketing
This category recognises the most impactful experiential marketing campaign or initiative that brought a brand to life through immersive, interactive, and memorable experiences. Whether through live events, pop-ups, virtual activations, or hybrid engagements, entries should demonstrate how the brand successfully connected with consumers on an emotional level, encouraged participation or sharing, and strengthened overall brand perception and loyalty.
20. Excellence in Financial Empowerment Marketing *NEW*
This category honours campaigns that have empowered Filipinos to take charge of their financial futures. It recognises marketing initiatives that drive financial confidence, literacy, and inclusion — from promoting smart money management to building trust in digital banking and fintech solutions. Judges will look for creativity, clarity of purpose, and measurable impact in enabling greater financial participation and independence among consumers.
21. 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.

22. 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.

23. Excellence in Integrated Marketing

This category recognises the organisation that most effectively engaged its target audience through a cohesive and results-driven integrated marketing strategy. Entrants should demonstrate how a suite of marketing tools and at least 3 media channels — such as digital, social, print, broadcast, or experiential — were strategically employed to deliver a unified brand message, create meaningful engagement, and successfully drive core business objectives.

24. 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.

25. Excellence in Launch Marketing
This category recognises the most outstanding marketing strategy developed to launch or relaunch a brand, product, or service. Entries should demonstrate how the launch strategy generated awareness, excitement, and engagement, effectively positioning the offering in the market. Entrants must showcase clear objectives, creative execution, and measurable impact on the brand, product, service, or organisation’s overall success.
26. Excellence in Live-Streaming Marketing

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.

27. Excellence in Location-Based Marketing
This category recognises campaigns that effectively utilise location-based services, geofencing, and proximity marketing to deliver personalised and location-specific content to consumers. Submissions should highlight how location data has been leveraged to boost engagement and conversions.
28. 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.
29. 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.

30. Excellence in Media Strategy
This category recognises the organisation that most effectively leveraged media channels as a strategic driver to deliver a powerful and results-oriented marketing campaign. Entries should demonstrate how smart media planning, innovative channel selection, and data-driven optimisation maximised reach, engagement, and ROI, while successfully achieving the campaign’s core business objectives.
31. 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.

32. Excellence in Multilingual Marketing
This category recognises brands that excel in engaging diverse audiences through thoughtful and effective multilingual marketing strategies. Entries should demonstrate how language, culture, and local nuances were strategically leveraged to communicate the brand’s message, foster meaningful connections, and drive engagement and business results across multiple linguistic and cultural segments.
33. 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 in order 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.

34. Excellence in Out-of-Home Advertising

This category recognises advertising campaigns that utilised the Out-of-Home (OOH) medium in an innovative, creative way that successfully raised brand awareness. OOH can include media such as billboards, transit media or any other media traditionally classified as OOH.

35. 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.

36. Excellence in Predictive & Personalised Marketing *NEW*
This category recognises brands that harness the power of data intelligence, AI, and analytics to anticipate customer needs and deliver hyper-personalised experiences. Entries should demonstrate how predictive modelling, behavioural insights, or machine learning were used to tailor content, offers, and interactions that meaningfully improved engagement, conversion, or retention. Judges will look for creativity in execution, depth of insight, and measurable business impact.
37. Excellence in Public Sector / Non-Profit Marketing

This category recognises the best public sector or non-profit campaign, initiative or programme that raised awareness and successfully drove business objectives for government initiatives, community services and / or NGOs.

38. 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.

39. Excellence in Retail / Shopper Marketing

This category recognises the organisation that most effectively ran a campaign, initiative or programme designed to reach shoppers via sampling, competitions, in-store or in a retail environment etc., and successfully translated this into future purchases of the featured product(s).

40. Excellence in Search Marketing
This category recognises the most effective digital marketing campaigns that placed search at the heart of their strategy. Entries should demonstrate excellence in search engine optimisation (SEO) across both desktop and mobile platforms, showcasing how cross-channel search tactics drove visibility, engagement, and measurable business results. Campaigns that illustrate strategic keyword use, technical optimisation, and creative search-driven content are highly encouraged.
41. 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.

42. Excellence in Sponsorship Activation
This category honours campaigns that effectively leverage sponsorships to create meaningful and impactful brand experiences. Entrants should demonstrate how they activated sponsorships (e.g., sports events, entertainment, or influencer partnerships) to engage their target audience, enhance brand visibility, and drive measurable outcomes. Successful entries will showcase creative activations that align with the brand’s values and resonate with consumers.
43. Excellence in TV / Video Advertising
This category recognises the most creative, engaging, and impactful video advertisements that capture audience attention and drive results. Entries may include traditional television spots as well as campaigns on digital video platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, or social video channels. Submissions should highlight strong storytelling, production quality, and strategic execution that resonate with the target audience and achieve measurable marketing objectives.
44. Excellence in Urban Guerrilla Marketing
This category acknowledges unconventional and creative marketing tactics executed in urban environments to captivate and surprise city-dwelling consumers. Entrants should detail how they have effectively utilised guerrilla marketing strategies in urban settings, creating memorable and buzz-worthy experiences that resonate with urban audiences.
45. Excellence in Viral Marketing
This category recognises campaigns that successfully create highly shareable content, generating widespread awareness and engagement through organic word-of-mouth and social sharing. Entrants should demonstrate how their viral marketing efforts have captivated audiences, sparked conversations, and achieved significant brand visibility, often surpassing traditional marketing channels. Successful examples will highlight creativity, relevance, and the ability to quickly capture and hold the public’s attention.

Talent Categories

46. 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
47. 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.
48. Marketer of the Year (Not for Entry)

This category recognises the brand that performs best at the Marketing Excellence Awards 2026.

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.
Download Guidelines
Core Submission Template