DDB Group Aotearoa named New Zealand Agency of the Year in Spikes Asia’s 2024 Creativity Report

(Pictured: DDB Group’s Gary Steele, Priya Patel and Matty Burton)

DDB Group Aotearoa, which was named 2023 Campaign Brief New Zealand Agency of the Year earlier this year, has been named New Zealand Agency of the Year following the announcement of Spikes Asia’s 2024 Creativity Report. Special Auckland has also ranked #3 Independent Agency of the Year.

Spikes Asia’s annual Creativity Report reveals the 2024 Agency of the Year by market. The Report, which is available to everyone, shines a light on the best creative work, as selected by Spikes Juries, and includes the expanded rankings for this year’s top-performing networks, agencies and companies from the region.

DDB Group Aotearoa, which ranked #4 APAC Agency of the Year, won both the PR Grand Prix and the Social & Influencer Grand Prix for Team Heroine ‘Correct The Internet’ at Spikes Asia plus 1 Glass Spike, 5 Silvers and 1 Bronze – making DDB the most awarded NZ agency at Spikes for the fourth year in a row. The wins attributed to DDB Worldwide being named 6th Agency Network of the Year.

Special New Zealand, winner of the Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix for ‘The Last Performance‘, was in second place. This saw an insurance brand leveraging the popularity of a TV series to attract new customers – leading to a 135% increase in website traffic.

In third place came Colenso BBDO, Auckland. Its work for Skinny, ‘Skinny Phone It In‘, which invited regular New Zealanders to record radio ads for the telco, led to a 34% year-on-year increase in acquisitions. It took a Gold in Creative Effectiveness and a Silver in Creative Strategy.

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.