VML Melbourne named Aussie Agency of the Year in Spikes Asia’s 2024 Creativity Report; Special AUS named Indie Agency of the Year; The Monkeys named Strategy + Effectiveness Agency of the Year

VML Melbourne has been named Australian Agency of the Year and #2 APAC Agency of the Year, following the announcement of Spikes Asia’s 2024 Creativity Report. VML Melbourne and AIRBAG scored five Grands Prix for Honest Eggs Co. ‘FitChix’ across Brand Experience & Activation, Creative Commerce, Healthcare, Integrated and Outdoor. The wins have attributed to VML being named #2 Network of the Year behind Dentsu in at #1.

 

Special Australia has been named Independent Agency of the Year. Special Australia was behind ‘Shift 20 Initiative‘, which saw some of Australia’s biggest brands reshoot their most famous ads with disabled actors. It won four Spikes, including the Grand Prix for Good.

Says Julian Schreiber, partner and chief creative officer at Special Australia: “We’re incredibly proud of winning Independent Agency of the Year because it’s a summary of our efforts: you win things like this when your output is not about any one client but doing great work across the board. And about putting out work that doesn’t just change a brand’s path, but the industry’s path as well.”

Special Australia also took Silver in Film for ‘Get Almost Anything Anything 2.0‘ for Uber Eats – a humorous ad involving a Bridgerton actor ordering a 19th-century gentleman on Uber Eats to show that the app is not just for food.

Howatson+Company was named #6 Independent Agency of the Year.

The Monkeys, part of Accenture Song, which was named 2023 Campaign Brief Australian Agency of the Year, won Strategy and Effectiveness Agency of the Year for the third time. Its wins included the Creative Strategy Grand Prix for ‘The First Digital Nation‘, as well as a Silver in Creative Strategy for ‘Un-Australia‘, which poked fun at the overuse of a politically charged word. The Meat & Livestock Australia ad saw Australians branded as ‘un-Australian’ for a variety of absurd reasons, including a love for lamb BBQs – and led to a more than 11.9m views and a 12% uptick in sales.

Says Tara Ford, chief creative officer, The Monkeys: “Our purpose is to make ideas happen that provoke cultural impact, emotional response, and behavioural change as it’s the best strategy for effectiveness. Everyone at the agency, from strategy to production and creative to content, lives this purpose on behalf of every client.”

The Spikes Golden Palm for 2024 went to Exit Films, Australia. Its work for Telstra, ‘This Is Footy Country‘, won multiple Spikes, including the Film Craft Grand Prix.

Revolver, Australia, was in second place. Among its wins was ‘Everybody Has a Thing‘, which repurposed a popular song from The Sound of Music to celebrate the diversity of eBay’s customers.

Other highlights from the 2024 rankings include Ogilvy securing the top rank across three markets, India, Mainland China and Malaysia, and Leo Burnett across two for the Philippines and Taiwan. Choojai and Friends took the lead for Thailand, the only independent agency to rank for Agency of the Year by Market across the Awards.

Agency of the Year by Market were as follows:

Australia: VML, Melbourne
India: Ogilvy, Mumbai
Japan: Dentsu Inc., Tokyo
Mainland China: Ogilvy, Shanghai
Malaysia: Ogilvy, Kuala Lumpur
New Zealand: DDB New Zealand, Auckland
The Philippines: Leo Burnett, Manila
Singapore: BLKJ HAVAS, Singapore
South Korea: Cheil Worldwide, Seoul
Taiwan: Leo Burnett, Taipei
Thailand: Choojai and Friends, Bangkok

The themes covered in the Report include the following: Enhance and enable with AI, reflective of the increased number of companies using AI in the creative process. Entries using AI more than doubled year on year, from 331 in 2023 to 672 in 2024. This year’s Spikes winners challenged and shifted mindsets to help tackle Asia’s most urgent briefs, including sustainability and gender bias. Another prominent theme proved how brands needed to build connections through culture – winning work showed how brands had understood culture and the nuances of different platforms and social memes, so they had the best chance of connecting with audiences. Humour: The revival, Spikes winners showed how a light touch, satire and spinning a flaw into a feature can engage new audiences and increase profit margins. Finally, work this year saw a new approach to immersive entertainment– gamification, technology and craft were used to involve audiences in engaging brand-led experiences.

Says Simon Cook, CEO, LIONS: “We’re delighted to release the 2024 Spikes Asia Creativity Report and reflect on this year’s Awards, which show the brilliant diversity of Asian creativity along with the region’s local cultural nuances. It’s an exciting time for creativity in APAC, and it’s inspiring to see the region’s commitment to creativity. I’d like to congratulate all shortlisted and winning work for setting the creative benchmark for another year.”

Says Jaime Ng, festival director, Spikes Asia: “The Spikes Asia Creativity Report provides the official, expanded rankings for this year’s top-performing networks, agencies and companies from across the region, and we’re excited to be able to share this with our APAC community. The themes and trends in the Report reflect how APAC continues to be a creative powerhouse and the many specialisms that have emerged from the body of the winning work, such as AI, gaming, well-being and humour. A huge thank you to our Jurors for their expertise in setting the creative benchmark in APAC.”

The rankings are compiled using data from Spikes-winning and shortlisted work from 2024. The Spikes Asia Creativity Report is powered by LIONS’ intelligence platform, The Work, housing the world’s most extraordinary creative thinking with insights into how it was briefed, researched, produced and crafted. The Report is an essential tool for benchmarking creative excellence and effectiveness for the year ahead, sharing analysis and insights from the winning work and lessons on how brands are growing businesses and tackling some of the region’s most challenging problems in innovative ways.

Access the full report, for free, here.

All results for the Spikes Asia Awards can be found at https://www.lovethework.com/work-awards/awards/spikes-asia.