Connect

Where digital fosters participation, co-creation, and community.

This category celebrates work that builds meaningful interaction between people and brands - from social communities and UGC campaigns to live digital activations, creator collaborations, interactive experiences, commerce moments, and community-led initiatives. 

 

It recognises the power of participation, conversation, and collective creativity in shaping culture and driving engagement.

 

COM01: Social Communities

This category recognizes exceptional efforts in creating, nurturing, and sustaining vibrant social communities for brands or publishers. Eligible entries include new or ongoing communities where social activity is strategically designed to engage users, foster meaningful connections, and strengthen loyalty. Please provide planned KPI’s with evidence of actual results.

Jury Panel: Social, Community and Influencer Marketing Panel

COM02: Co-Creation & User-generated Content (UGC)

Social campaigns and activities created to encourage users or communities to contribute or collaborate with the brand.

 

Best use of user-generated content (not influencer, celebrity or brand-led created or developed content) to achieve a marketing goal. Entrants must show innovation in encouraging and leveraging UGC.

Jury Panel: Social, Community and Influencer Marketing Panel

 

COM03: Social Media Campaigns

Brand communication campaigns where social media was the primary or sole medium used. Entries can be on one platform (e.g. TikTok) or can be a Social Media programme that extends across several platforms, e.g. TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, as well as custom platforms.

 

Paid-for influencers engaged in the success of the campaign should be disclosed with budgets, where possible.

Jury Panel: Social, Community and Influencer Marketing Panel

 

COM04: Online Video Channels

Online video channels with dedicated fans or followers. Entrants need to show how this channel helped achieve marketing objectives, not paid media performance results.

This category does not exclude YouTube, Meta, Google, or TikTok channels however entries should not be focused on executing paid strategies on these channels but rather the advocacy and amplification of the communities they have.

Publishing channels have their own category (See Publishing).

Jury Panel: Social, Community and Influencer Marketing Panel

 

COM05: Influencer Marketing

Excellence in the use of influencer marketing. Work entered must be Influencer-generated content only and the primary channel should be the influencer's own social channels. 

Entries must include:

1. Objectives vs results: Detailed campaign objectives and outcomes, including KPIs such as revenue impact, ROAS, brand lift (brand health), conversion rates, website traffic, or other relevant client/campaign metrics.
2. Audience alignment: A statement explaining how the influencer’s audience aligns with the brand’s target market, demonstrating strategic relevance.
3. Budget transparency:
• Influencer costs (if an NDA prevents disclosure, include as part of production costs).
  Paid media budget, if applicable (including spark ads or any format that would boost performance unnaturally).
4. Media performance: Clearly distinguish between organic performance and any paid media or amplification, with breakdowns for reach, impressions, engagements, clicks, and other relevant metrics.

Compliance and authenticity:

• All content must comply with local and platform-specific disclosure requirements. Failure to properly disclose paid or sponsored content will result in  disqualification.

• Content must be original to the influencer and not repurposed from existing brand campaigns, with the exception of a brand logo appearing on the content.

Additional considerations:

• For collaborations involving multiple creators, results should be aggregated and clearly attributed to each participant.
• All performance claims should be verifiable through analytics dashboards, screenshots, or platform reports.

 Jury Panel: Social, Community and Influencer Marketing Panel

 

CHN16: Bots, Messaging and Dark Social

Use of chat, chatbots, conversational AI chatbots and messaging platforms (dark social) to achieve a marketing or communication result.

If utilised, the use of conversational AI systems, those that use deep learning and natural language processing (NLP) techniques to generate human-like text responses in real-time to be detailed. Planned Consumer Journey (where applicable) should be shared with anticipated consumer behaviour and desired marketing objectives to demonstrate impact. Production/development costs, as well as media costs to drive user adoption, should also be shared.

Jury Panel: Social, Community and Influencer Marketing Panel

 

CHN11: Digital Installation and Activations

Use of digital and non-digital channels in an integrated manner to achieve marketing objectives. Entries in this category must show that multiple types of media were used in the campaign (e.g. Screens, Social, DOOH,). This could include syncing or real-time augmentation to create the effect of interactive print etc. Planned/anticipated media, channel and business results should be declared together with actual results.

Jury Panel: Innovative Engineers Panel

 

CHN18: Interactive Mixed Media

Use of digital and non-digital channels in an integrated manner to achieve marketing objectives. Entries in this category must show that multiple types of media were used in the campaign (e.g. Screens, Social, DOOH,). This could include syncing or real-time augmentation to create the effect of interactive print etc. Planned/anticipated media, channel and business results should be declared together with actual results.

Jury Panel: Marketers Panel

 

CRF08: Excellence in Craft: Social Media Community Management

For excellent community management that builds, engages and maintains a highly engaged audience while cultivating an overwhelmingly positive sentiment for the brand. This can be either campaign-specific or as part of a long-term consumer engagement strategy. In both cases, business objectives and KPIs need to be shared.

Jury Panel: Social, Community and Influencer Marketing Panel

 

CRF14:  Excellence in Craft: Creator Content

Honours outstanding content and creativity made (independently) by creators and influencers. Not necessarily in partnership with a brand.

Jury Panel: Social, Community and Influencer Marketing Panel