Jury president Wendy Walker, VP marketing ASEAN, Salesforce, outlined four key trends that came out of this year’s entries. She referenced the use of emotion, especially humour, as a constant thread in B2B storytelling, with brands leaning into entertaining narratives to forge stronger audience connections.
Second, purpose-led campaigns that clearly tied brand relevance and critical business impact stood out. Third, there was a considerable volume of work from small businesses. And, lastly, she highlighted the rise of influencers in B2B, with brands leveraging them in different ways across multiple channels. She also mentioned a rise of quality work from Latin America as well as a notable absence from Asia, Africa and parts of Europe.
To select the winners, she explained, the jury looked at whether the B2B campaigns had a real commercial and business growth impact.
Speaking of the winning work, she said: ‘This piece ticked all our boxes. We love the boldness, the confident execution, the pure B2B creativity and, of course, the fact that this piece is built on a truly universal human insight.’
When asked why it won over other strong contenders, she added: ‘The first thing that really struck us was this very strong insight that it was built on. We also felt it was very bold in the way it was executed. It’s a truly cross-channel piece of work, and it performed very well across all channels. And the results were absolutely undeniable.’
She concluded that: ‘We had wonderful purposeful work that did have incredible impact. But in terms of what will take this category forward and inspire B2B to push boundaries and use entertainment as a way to tell the story of a brand, this really stood out.’
