Singapore – MMA APAC, a not-for-profit marketing trade association, announced the winners of the prestigious 2022 SMARTIES APAC Awards. The categories in the awards include marketing impact, purpose driven marketing, impact media, experience technology, Web3, e-commerce marketing and creative.
In its eleventh year, the refreshed SMARTIES APAC handed over 81 awards that included 25 gold, 27 silver and 29 bronze ones. The award show that has 7 categories and 29 sub-categories attracted a total of over 2,300 entries this year.
Big winners of the night were Heineken Silver’s ‘The eKoin’ and Cadbury’s ‘Shah Rukh Khan My’ ad campaigns which were bestowed the ‘Best in Show’ honour. Lifebuoy won ‘Most Resilient Brand of the Year’ while Mondelez India Food Pvt Ltd. and ‘Cadbury Celebrations’ were felicitated with the title ‘Advertiser of the Year’ and ‘Brand of the Year’ respectively.
Amongst the agencies – Wavemaker India, Publicis Groupe Vietnam and Mindshare APAC were adjudged the ‘Media Agency’, ‘Creative Agency’ and ‘Agency of the Year’. Grab and Rephrase.ai were awarded the ‘Publisher of the Year’ and ‘Enabling Technology Company of the Year’ respectively.
This year’s SMARTIES also launched the world’s first advertising and innovation award on blockchain in the form of tokenized trophies or NFTs.
The NFT award will feature four exclusive animated artworks designed by Brazilian artist Adhemas Batista, representing the SMARTIES trophy categories (Bronze, Silver, Gold , Grand Prix & Industry Awards). All winners will own a unique artwork. Each NFT award will also give specific privileges to its owner such as workshops, free tickets for events, invites to showcase, case-studies and other community driven activities.
Rohit Dadwal, MMA Board Member and Managing Director APAC, said: “Year after year, I am excited by the innovative campaigns that the ecosystem collaboratively is creating keeping in mind what today’s consumer wants. It’s equally inspiring to see a treasury of marketing and advertising geniuses come together on one of the most prestigious platforms of all times – MMA SMARTIES APAC 2022.”
He added, “We have also launched NFTs to gift winners through which we will acknowledge their outstanding contributions to the industry by issuing a digital award which can be verified for ownership at any point of time. The NFT also exhibits the rich legacy of past winners and makes the award valuable as well as prestigious. This initiative makes us the torchbearer in the industry for launching this very first cryptographic asset.”
MMA SMARTIES is currently organised in 14 markets globally out of which five are in APAC including India, China, Vietnam, Indonesia with the regional awards event held in Singapore.
Commenting on his experience as the jury chair, Umesh Phadke, chief transformation officer at L’Oréal SAPMENA, said, “MMA through Smarties APAC has established a strong platform for the industry to showcase the most inspirational campaigns and case studies. As a chair for the awards, I was honoured to have the opportunity to see the best work from our industry. It was energising to see brands and agencies in APAC pushing the boundaries by incorporating new technology and creative ideas.”
