SHANGHAI, CHINA — After several rounds of remote and in-person judging, the ONE Asia Awards 2023 declared its winners online on December 12. Four campaigns — Tuvalu‘s “The First Digital Nation,” McDonald’s “The Unbranded Menu,” Samsung‘s “Flipvertising,” and Sotetsu Holdings‘ “A Train of Memories” — were the event’s biggest winners, with each winning multiple Best of Division awards. These four winners prove how market insight not only leads to remarkable campaigns but also points the way forward for creativity.
Taking home the Best of Show Award was “The First Digital Nation,” a campaign that initiated the island nation of Tuvalu’s migration to the metaverse. With climate change causing a significant rise in sea levels, Tuvalu is at serious risk of losing its entire land mass — and with it, its entire history and culture.
Australian agency The Monkeys stepped in and, in partnership with the Government of Tuvalu, began the most ambitious cultural preservation project in history. Tuvalu would begin uploading all its records, digital versions of its historical artifacts, and even a recreation of the island itself onto the cloud, allowing the disappearing country to continue existing in the metaverse.
The project not only showed how new and emerging technologies could be leveraged for social good, but also raised an unprecedented amount of awareness on the real impact of climate change. This seamless blend of purpose and progress proved to be an effective approach for The Monkeys, and should serve as an example for advocacy-related campaigns moving forward.
“The First Digital Nation,” along with top honors at the 2023 ONE Asia Awards, also won the Best of Discipline Awards in Creative Effectiveness and Public Relations.
Another big winner at the awards was McDonald’s Philippines’ “The Unbranded Menu,” a unique digital execution that leveraged already-existing assets in popular video games and turned them into a high-engagement scavenger hunt.
The idea was deceptively simple: gamers were asked to share images of fast food items that resembled McDonald’s products found in their games. The brand then rewarded them with exclusive deals, which in turn spurred even more gamers to start searching for McDonald’s in games like Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy XIV, and even cult favorite, Goat Simulator. The campaign went viral almost immediately and registered a 35% uptick in McDelivery sales alone.
The campaign was cited for its resourcefulness, having generated an incredible amount of engagement with relatively low costs of actual production. Instead of trying to win its audiences over with new material, McDonald’s simply sought to connect itself to things its market already loved and did so in a unique — and more importantly, fun — fashion.
“The Unbranded Menu” was the brainchild of Leo Burnett Manila, and won the Best of Discipline Awards in Direct Marketing, Experiential & Immersive, Gaming, and Social Media, along with numerous other gold and silver awards.
Samsung also saw a tremendous amount of success with “Flipvertising,” which flipped the tables on the relationship between ads and their Gen Z audience. Rather than targeting a specific audience with ads for the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4, the campaign got audiences actively trying to get themselves targeted by one specific ad. Why? Because seeing it would win them a free phone.
The ad itself would only appear, however, if users trained their search algorithms to feed it to them. What resulted was a frantic game of online searches, with clues popping up in both branded and unbranded content, as well as in smaller, hidden ads that encouraged those who saw it to go even deeper. It was the first time an audience actually tried to game algorithms to show them an advertisement, and it delivered impressive results for Samsung.
Aside from the novelty of having the market target themselves for an ad, “Flipvertising” showed judges at the ONE Asia Awards how engagement can come from the sheer fun of participation. Providing its audiences with a one-of-a-kind activity that involves gaming the algorithms that shape their lives was too amusing a prospect to pass up.
“Flipvertising” was created by Australia’s CHEP Network, and won the Best of Discipline Awards in Creative Use of Data; Interactive, Online & Mobile.
The last campaign to win multiple Best of Discipline Awards was Sotetsu Holdings’ “A Train of Memories,” a short film that showed how families can form emotional connections with commuter trains.
The film depicted a father and daughter traveling on the same train throughout their lives, allowing audiences to watch the both of them grow older together, and witness how their relationship shifted over time. The story ends on a heartwarming note: with the father reluctant to part ways with his now-adult daughter, and her reassuring him that her next stop will never be too far away from him.
“A Train of Memories” shows how, at the end of the day, emotional resonance is still king. The campaign didn’t break any rules, nor did it attempt to revolutionize anything. Instead, it found its core in a universal experience and connected with its audience from there. With emerging technologies disrupting the creative industry on an almost-daily basis, the film is a reminder that, at the end of the day, creativity is still all about people.
Japan’s SIX Inc. led the development of “A Train of Memories,” which won the Best of Discipline Awards in Film & Video and Moving Image Craft & Production.
Check out the full list of winners and their showcase videos at the official ONE Asia Awards 2023 showcase page.
