The marketing data and analytics company, Kantar, revealed the winners of the 2023 Creative Effectiveness Awards in Southeast Asia, recognizing the most impactful ads of last year.

Throughout 2022, Kantar's creative testing solutions were used to evaluate a thousand digital, social and TV ads from Southeast Asia. The awards celebrate those that were most effective at driving sales and increasing long-term brand equity.

The winning ads also embody the key trends which set apart the most effective ads, acting as a creative beacon for the industry during a time when creativity and effectiveness are ever-more important. New analysis recently co-published by Kantar and WARC found that the most creative and effective ads generate greater than 4X profitability.

This year's winning ads come from a diverse range of brands, categories, and markets using different creative approaches to engage consumers and be memorable:

Digital and Social In no particular order

TV In no particular order

The foundations of good advertising hold true, like:

• Having clear marketing objectives with brilliant execution
• Being distinctive and meaningfully different
• Triggering an emotional response
• Staying close to the consumers
• Staying up to date in an industry that never rests

Kantar's validated ad testing solutions determine each ad's ability to contribute to brand equity and drive sales.

In 2022, four themes set apart the most effective ads in Southeast Asia:

Simplicity – With simplicity at the heart of outstanding creativity and effectiveness, some brands simply go down a straightforward route of clear messaging and metaphors. Cleverly crafting the message and brand to strip out over-thought complexity.

Escapism - The challenges and crises of recent years seem to have sparked an imagination explosion in people's search for escapism and alternative realities. Brands are igniting consumer imagination and opening portals of fantasy. 

Vibrancy– In a world where people are short on time and attention, content needs to grab viewers' attention and quickly sell the concept. An immersive experience using Asia's cultural iconography, colors, sights, sounds, and senses drive the brand.

Empathy – A rising trend in advertising that is working towards a better world, featuring positive social messages. Ads about representation and inclusion to make the unheard and unseen in Asia, heard and seen. The most effective form of representation is when it demonstrates empathy in a way that's most authentic to the brand.

"Our Kantar Creative Effectiveness Awards clearly demonstrate that advertising has a bigger role to play than just informing consumers of available products and services. We often talk about the foundations of good advertising – be distinctive, brand intrinsically, be meaningfully different, trigger an emotional response, and listen to your consumers. These are simple imperatives, but tough to get right. Advertising needs to be cleverly conceived, but also needs to be kept simple and differentiated from the competition. Brands that stand out use technology to understand what motivates consumers and what makes a brand memorable to stay on top of industry trends", Katie McClintock, Managing Director Southeast Asia at Kantar, explained, adding that “the key to ensure advertising thrives in a multichannel, digital-led environment is fast, effective consumer feedback together with the integration of advanced analytics and automation into the creative process to better understand ad effectiveness."

The award-winning ads show that effectiveness should be the goal for all advertisers, whatever format or sector, Juliano Piccoli, Client Partner Creative & Media at Kantar in Singapore concludes.

By MediaBUZZ