Tag: YouTube Works Awards

Manila, Philippines – YouTube has announced the winners of its 2022 YouTube Works Awards in the Philippines, celebrating the ingenuity and impactful storytelling of brands on the platform.

The awards ceremony of the Philippines was held on October 25 and was the first on-ground YouTube Brandcast event in two years.

There are seven recognitions in total including The Best Personalization award, which remains unclaimed for two years in a row. The said award recognizes the brand that is able to demonstrate creative ways in customising its message to the audience. 

The Grand Prix, which is the highest recognition given to a campaign that is “not only effective,” but also creative, innovative, and data-driven, was won by Accenture’s ‘StoriesofAccenture Vertical Film Festival: Gravity’. The same campaign also bagged the Force For Good award which honours campaigns that best demonstrate brand values and proven impact on social issues. 

Using an immersive rotating screen experience, the poignant video highlighted the character’s inner turmoil. The chaotic scenes simultaneously highlighted the importance of having a workplace that provides a dynamic environment while providing emotional support for its workers to thrive and get through life’s challenges.

Meanwhile, the Best Collaboration award, which celebrates the best strategic and creative collaboration between brands and YouTube Creators, was given to Orocan’s Ms. Hurt campaign. This features host and drag queen Paolo Ballesteros as the titular Ms. Hurt, bringing her audience to a vlog-style tour of her house and bags including the Orocan Ice Box.

The Best Storytelling award, which as the name suggests, lauds brands that are able to deliver a compelling story through their campaign, was snared by Union Bank of the Philippines’ Heaven. The bank featured a commercial where a man named Dante enters the underworld of inadequate bank practices, showcases all of Union Bank’s solutions, and creates a better banking experience for consumers. 

Jollibee’s much-talked-about Now Showing: Love for a Perfect Pair took home the Brand as Creator award, which is given to a campaign that best demonstrates brands as creators and strategically uses YouTube formats to tap into consumer trends and growing communities. 

The 36-minute short film was, in fact, a triumph for the beloved world-class Filipino fast-food chain as it heralded the return of the well-renowned love team, Bea Alonzo and John Lloyd Cruz. 

Last but not the least, rounding up this year’s awards is Diskartech’s Carabao which won The Challenger award, given to SME brands that were able “to do more with less.” The Carabao showed how easy it is to get loans from Diskartech by presenting it in a fantastical and humorous way via a person popping out of the backside of a carabao.

This year’s winners were determined by an esteemed jury composed of marketers, digital experts, directors, creatives, and content creators from all over the country.

Gabby Roxas, country marketing manager for Google Philippines and South Asia Frontier Markets, said, “This year’s YouTube Works journey showed us how brands took their storytelling a notch higher to engage with consumers as we move from the shadow of the pandemic.”

He added, “In addition, the return of YouTube Brandcast as an on-ground event after two long years feels great! We get to award each brand in-person and showcase YouTube Works as a celebration of what brands and agencies in the country can achieve with YouTube as their video platform.”

Meanwhile, Golda Roldan, CEO of Wunderman Thompson Philippines and head of the 2022 YouTube Works Awards jury, commented, “I believe that brand campaigns can always make a difference beyond business results. This year’s YouTube Works winners strategically used the platform in crafting creative, effective, and meaningful campaigns that will inspire the next generation of brand storytelling on YouTube,” 

To name a few, the jury included Angie Tijam-Tohid, executive creative director at Havas Ortega Group; Dan Villegas, director for TV and film; Digs Dimagiba, CMO and head of the Analytics, Brand, Communications & Marketing Technology (ABCMT) Group of Metrobank Philippine; and Dave Drilon, chief digital officer of total Publicis Groupe PH.

Manila, Philippines – YouTube retains its leadership among Filipino viewers, where in the country, the watch base now stands at 45 million viewers. With this, local brands are in a better position to tap the platform in attaining desired business and brand results. 

In their latest ‘YouTube Brandcast’ press event, the platform noted that there has been more than 25% rise in watchtime from April 2020 to April 2021, while total hours of content uploaded to YouTube by channels in the Philippines grew more than four times between 2020 and 2019.

There has been a huge influx of new creators on the platform as well, with over 3,000 local channels hitting more than 100,000 subscribers, over 250 channels having more than one million subscribers, and 12 channels having more than 10 million subscribers, as of June 2021.

“In the second year of the pandemic, more Filipinos turned to YouTube to use content that can help them with their everyday life. YouTube’s reach, creators, content uploads, and watchtime increased phenomenally and this ecosystem growth unlocked great possibilities for brands to drive results at scale, and deliver a fulfilling experience for viewers,” said Gabby Roxas, marketing head at Google Philippines.

In terms of the genres or categories most watched on the platform locally, recipe videos grew by more than 50% in watchtime during the first quarter of 2021 compared to the same time last year. Skincare video watch time had also jumped by more than 80% in the same period and interestingly, that for shampoo videos more than doubled. 

Furthermore, in continuing to seek entertainment to cope with the prolonged isolation periods, watchtime for role-playing game (RPG) videos grew by more than 80% while that for drama television series grew by more than 70% in the same period.

With these genres rising to popularity, brands locally can tap into these categories through their respective content creators to create meaningful brand-infused content, such as the platform’s sponsorable activities like Super Stream, Music Night, and FanFest among others allow brands like Unilever to engage consumers effectively.

“Marketing in a connected world opens new opportunities for brands to connect deeper with people, and YouTube is an effective platform to do that. Through YouTube, we were able to tell our brand stories in an unmissable way, standing up in the frontline of culture to engage today’s attention-restricted audience,” said Dennis Perez, media director at Unilever Philippines.

The platform’s success on brand integrated campaigns has been evident when they launched their first-ever YouTube Works locally, where they recognized the brands that have created campaigns that take the support from the platform’s diverse audience and capabilities.

“YouTube empowers brands to push the boundaries of creative storytelling that delivers results and I’ve seen this with the finalists of the inaugural YouTube Works awards. They used YouTube and its content creators in a powerful way, resulting in key achievements in awareness, engagement and action. I’m excited to see what brands and agencies will come up with and submit in the next run of YouTube Works,” said Leigh Reyes, jury head at YouTube Works and chair 3meritus and product officer at MullenLowe TREYNA.

Manila, Philippines – Taking bold and creative risks pays off: this is one of the main mantras evident in the first-ever YouTube Works Awards in the Philippines, as it awarded the brand content, campaigns, and channels that stood out in effectiveness and creativity in 2020. 

The YouTube Works Awards are a staple instreaming platform YouTube which celebrates and champions the brilliant minds behind producing the most innovative and effective campaigns on the platform in the past year. This year, the awards finally landed in the Philippines, done in partnership with market research firm Kantar.

Despite being a year fraught with challenges, brands in the Philippines set the bar high on effectively using YouTube to deliver results and tell stories that resonate with local audiences. 

“As the pandemic changed life as we know it, the way we tell brand stories and engage audiences evolved too. YouTube Works Awards saw that despite the restrictions in creative production and reaching consumers, brands in the Philippines rose above the challenge and expanded the possibilities with YouTube to effectively drive results and tell stories that resonate with Filipinos,” said Gabby Roxas, head of marketing at Google Philippines.

This year’s top award went to local soft drink brand RC Cola, whose ‘Basta’ campaign made by independent creative agency GIGIL, was lauded for being brave enough to take creative risks and in making effective use of Gen Z’s surrealist humor. To date, the video has more than seven million views on YouTube.

For Roxas, RC Cola’s bizarre story of a family who served up the message of the value of embracing and enjoying one’s differences is consistent with the campaign’s approach: the pursuit to unapologetically stand out in a sea of formulaic content to achieve marketing and business objectives.

Meanwhile, Leigh Reyes, chair emeritus and product officer at MullenLowe TREYNA, and jury head at YouTube Works, commented, “At a tumultuous time when it would normally be considered unconventional to experiment, bravery in exploring the bold and the new pays off. advertising approach, tapping into absurdism to cut through repetitive and mundane lockdown content.”

Meanwhile, local telco Talk N’ Text or TNT won the ‘Best Multi-Video Storytelling’ award for their ‘Free Games for All’ series, which capitalized on Filipinos’ love for gaming mixed with hugot lines or heart-pulling one-liners to tell the story of four friends bonding over online games via a triad of spots. Driving a 165% increase in revenue versus the previous year, the campaign proved that YouTube viewers keep coming back for episodic content especially if it offers a compelling narrative.

For the ‘Best Brand Channel’ category, local beer brand Red Horse won the award, whose YouTube channel looked beyond product marketing to create content that its target market would watch and engage with especially over a bottle of beer: online concerts, variety show sketches, and entertainment-led videos. This then led the channel to see a growth in subscribers, from 26,000 in October 2019 to 54,000 in 2020, garnering 3.4 million views last year in total. The channel continues to grow, with a subscriber base that now stands at more than 87,000. 

Meanwhile, instant noodle brand Lucky Me! Pancit Canton won a ‘Best Collaboration’ award for its work alongside social media influencer Mimiyuuuh for the campaign ‘Pinakahihintay NaThin’, which puts a light-hearted spin for the brand’s comeback to its original thin noodles in production. With this, Lucky Me! saw a lift in purchase intent and brand favor, achieving a view-through rate (VTR) of 18%, higher than campaigns without creator collaborations. 

YouTube Works Awards also featured two heartfelt campaigns that show how brands with purpose can drive impact in times of uncertainty.

First on the list is consumer goods conglomerate Procter & Gamble, whose heart-warming campaign on the real, raw sacrifices of our frontliners while being away from their families to care for the sick won the brand a ‘Force For Good’ award.

Meanwhile, Globe Telecom’s ‘A Star Wars Experience For All’ campaign won the ‘Best Long Form Storytelling’ award for its heartwarming story about two young boys who created a special viewing experience for their deaf friend. The campaign shows the importance of inclusivity by representing and uplifting persons with accessibility challenges.

Gary de Ocampo, chief executive officer for insights division at Kantar Philippines, congratulated all the winners of YouTube Works, adding that their campaigns are truly inspiring and speak volumes about the future of advertising in the Philippines. He also noted that from taking bold, creative risks to playing meaningful roles amid the pandemic, the brands listed in the awards have effectively harnessed insights and stories to use YouTube in driving desired results.

“While there were many great campaigns this year, the Best Personalization award went unclaimed, nonetheless. This brings an opportunity for brands and agencies to challenge themselves further about contextual targeting and fully unlock this potential. I’m excited to see how they will take this challenge to bag the award next year,” de Ocampo concluded.