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YouTube Works Awards

YouTube Works Awards

Open for submissions until March 8, 2023
SUBMIT HERE

YouTube Works Awards

About the Awards

Over the past decade, marketers have redefined how they communicate with consumers. From the heartwarming to the heart-racing — and everything in between — YouTube has seen how incredible digital content can drive equally powerful results.

The YouTube Works Awards, in partnership with Kantar, celebrate and champion the brilliant minds producing the most innovative and effective campaigns on YouTube in the past year.

About the Awards

Categories

1

Creative Visionary

Celebrating the campaign that executed the most captivating and original creative vision.

This category champions your singular vision of creating something exciting and wholly original. How did your story punch through the page and onto the screen? What key creative decisions were made along the way to delight and excite? This category celebrates the creative milestones that made your campaign effective, bold, and unforgettable.

2

Masterful Media Planning

Celebrating the campaign that best exemplifies brilliant media planning. From ideation to execution, this campaign soared thanks to a stroke of media planning genius.

Did you delight your intended audience with the right story at the right time? Did you guide your campaign with compelling media insights that brought your creative to life? This award recognizes the vital role of media planning and strategy in separating the good campaigns from the great.

3

Big Screen, Bigger Results

Celebrating the campaign that masterfully used the TV screen to reach viewers and drive results.

We’re on the hunt for YouTube Connected TV-first campaigns that use the big screen to make a big impact on their awareness and consideration objectives. How did you fine-tune your creative for the big screen? Did you set out to captivate audiences watching YouTube from their living rooms?

4

The Changemaker

Celebrating the campaign that walked the walk on social or environmental issues.

We’re looking for campaigns that demonstrate a brand’s fierce commitment to diversity, inclusion, sustainability, environmental issues, or other social causes. How did your campaign balance your brand’s purpose with a tangible impact that extends beyond the bottom line? How did you inspire and empower your audience to take action?

5

The Underdog

Celebrating the campaign that beat the odds and made big waves.

We’re looking for campaigns from small or medium-sized brands (think businesses with 1,500 or fewer employees) that had big-name ambitions and achieved the results to match. How did you transform limited resources into major impact? What brilliant creative idea or novel consumer insight helped your campaign punch above its weight?

6

Brands as Creators

Celebrating the campaign that best demonstrates brands behaving like creators.

We don’t just mean channels with flashy content or brands that partner with creators — we’re looking for brands that show us that YouTube is in their DNA. This brand regularly crafts content informed by consumer trends and knows how to nurture passionate online communities. In what ways did your content meet audiences where and how they’re watching? How did you deliver entertainment and inspiration — just like a creator would?

7

The Shapeshifter

Celebrating the campaign that best adapts original storytelling for formats of all sorts.

We want to see how you flexed your chameleon colors for different viewing contexts — whether it’s on the go on mobile or relaxed in the living room. When did you use different ad formats — long, short, vertical, or skippable — to meet your audience on their terms? How did you navigate the changing tides of what viewers expect from their video content?

8

Grand Prix

Celebrating the most effective, creative, and innovative campaign that also drove exceptional business results.

The Grand Prix is our top prize; awarded to the campaign that breaks ground in multiple ways. This isn’t a category you can enter, but one you can hope to win if you show that your campaign checks all of the boxes.

How it works

Submit your best work from 2022 to be reviewed by our panel of industry leaders in two rounds.

Our judges will select the winners across a number of awards categories and a Grand Prix will be awarded to the submission that best demonstrates brilliant results, storytelling, and effectiveness.

How it works

Our 2023 judges

They’ve been there, done that, and got a few trophies themselves. Our judges will bring specialized expertise and significant experience across the industry and category spectrums.

Adriano Matos

Adriano Matos

Global Executive Creative Director

Leo Burnett

Amanda Richman

Amanda Richman

CEO, North America

Mindshare

Ashwini Karandikar

Ashwini Karandikar

EVP, Media Data & Tech

4As

Danilo Boer

Danilo Boer

Global Creative Partner

FCB

Denise Truelove

Denise Truelove

Global VP Brands, Mars Petcare

Mars

Lisa Giacosa

Lisa Giacosa

Chief Investment Officer

Spark Foundry

Liv Lewis

Liv Lewis

Executive Vice President

EGAMI Group

Margaret Johnson

Margaret Johnson

Chief Creative Officer and Partner

Goodby Silverstein & Partners

Stacey Stewart

Stacey Stewart

Chief Marketplace Officer

UM

Stacy Martinet

Stacy Martinet

Vice President, Marketing Strategy and Communications

Adobe

Tiffany Warren

Tiffany Warren

President and Founder

ADCOLOR

Tyler Bahl

Tyler Bahl

VP and Head of Marketing

Activision

1

Contest begins

January 25, 2023

2

Submissions end

March 8, 2023

3

Winners announced

June 2023

HOW TO SUBMIT

Best practices

Our judges are looking for campaigns that have creatively, strategically, and effectively leveraged YouTube to achieve a clear business impact. Make sure you set the scene and be clear about your KPIs. The metrics you provide will help our judges understand your work and the challenges of your category and marketplace.

Helpful hints:

  • Consider co-writing your submission; media and creative collaborations help to tell the full story
  • Tell a story with a beginning (objectives), middle (approach), and end (impact)
  • Stick to simple and concise
  • Include critical context around your creative
  • Remember we need all relevant media referenced in your submission
  • Note any factors external to YouTube that could have impacted results
  • Share as many metrics as you can and include objectives, KPIs, and benchmarks
Best practices

How to enter

Identify your most effective YouTube campaigns from 2022, review the Terms & Conditions, and fill out the submission form below.

The YouTube Works Awards are easy to enter. Even better, it’s free. So if you’re part of a marketing, media, creative, or agency team, show us your best-in-class digital work for your chance to be seen around the world.

Questions? Contact us at youtube-works-us@google.com

How to enter

YouTube Works 2023 Submission Form

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Please limit response to 250 words. What is the story you want to tell the judges so that they understand your business, market and competitive situation and have full context around your submission? What is the case you are making around your success? Important elements to cover are: What role does your brand play in the category? What is the competitive environment like? What important information about the climate/market conditions specific to your industry should we be aware of? What barriers did you need to overcome? Who was your primary target for this campaign? Why? What important information on your audience behavior and culture should we be aware of?

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Please limit response to 200 words. Include concrete objectives which are quantifiable and as specific as possible. Judges will be interested in any relevant background (e.g. targets, previous performance, etc.) around the goal set. Note that your response to this question will be considered when judges are assessing overall effectiveness with an eye to both how rigorous / business-critical the objectives were and how well they were achieved.

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Summarize the overall communications strategy you used to bring the idea to life. Include the channels you chose and why they made most sense given your target and core idea. If you are able to share your budget or scope, that would help the judges understand your approach. Judges will be looking for thoughtful and creative strategic planning.

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Please limit response to 200 words. Share any insights that translated to the creative idea. In addition to articulating the core idea behind your effort, consider referencing any customer or market research that may have inspired it, organizational reality or imperative that necessitated it, human truth or audience insights (wants, needs, attitudes, behaviors), as well as any context around how the idea and these inputs translated to the final execution

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Please include all materials referenced in your submission. Provide as many links as necessary, separated by commas. Case studies videos and any other campaign content is welcome.

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Please limit response to 100 words. In light of the overall strategy and communications plan you outlined above, explain the specific rationale behind your choice of YouTube capabilities - the key role and function you envisioned each of these tools playing. It is essential to highlight the role of these capabilities in helping you achieve your campaign goals. How did YouTube activation relate to other channels / media / creative in this campaign, and why?

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Please limit response to 200 words. Ensure your response is closely connected with and applicable to your stated objectives and target audience. Please also mention relevant benchmarks and specific success metrics, to help the judges understand your achievements. It is essential that you source your measurable and quantifiable results! For example, brand awareness was boosted by 20% year over year.

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Please limit response to 200 words. Beyond achieving the KPIs and objectives articulated, did you see other positive results in your business or on your brand as a result of this effort? Do you have any insight to share on what was at the heart of this success? What worked particularly well, what could’ve been done better? What changes would you make to your overall, communications, and channel strategy?

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YOUTUBE WORKS AWARD WINNERS

2022 Winners

Brands and agencies from across the industry brought forward 2021’s most creative, compelling, and effective campaigns to the YouTube Works Awards. Our panel of expert judges selected 6 outstanding winners across 8 categories:

Grand Prix
Creative Innovation
Media Innovation
Grand Prix
Creative Innovation
Media Innovation

4:00 AM Stories

Sheba

Sheba framed themselves as the solution to the near universal problem for parents of cats: the 4am feed. Sheba created a series of hilarious yet visually and audibly calming videos to capture cat owners who turn to YouTube when they struggle to get back to sleep after the familiar 4am wake up. They were able to leverage this insight and an existing consumer behavior to drive relevancy for their brand.

Check out the full story here
Big Screen, Big Results
Big Screen, Big Results

Kayak Presents: Search One and Done

Kayak

Kayak tailored CTV creative to specific viewer travel searches - elegantly connecting a lean back living room experience with the most relevant brand content. They were able to maximize frequency and reach at scale and pull back and dial up ask travel sentiments shifted throughout 2021. This is an example of how CTV can push beyond the limitations of linear TV buys.

Check out the full story here
Brands as Creators
Brands as Creators

Convos with CEOs

Target, Open Influence

Target was able to reflect back their brand value of inclusion by authentically tapping into YouTube Creators to elevate the stories of black female CEOS who are often overlooked in the retail space. Their personal stories of the ups and downs of their small businesses resonated with.

Check out the full story here
Action Driver
Action Driver

Vax That Thang Up

BLK, Majority, Motion Family

BLK tapped into nostalgia with a 2021 remix of the icons 90s hit “Back that thang up” to combat vaccine hesitancy among black daters under the age of 40. They created a full YouTube music video to encourage people to get vaccinated and back out into IRL dating. The campaign became one of the most recognized calls to vaccinate during the pandemic.

Check out the full story here
Breaking Barriers
Breaking Barriers

Tinder Presents "Once Upon a Bi"

Tinder

Tinder wanted to welcome in more bisexual daters who have historically felt erased from cultural discourse about love. The brand enlisted creators, Anna Akana and MilesChronicles, to share their authentic experiences as bisexual young people. The strategically targeted campaign captured the attention of daters and helped to spark conversations about fluidity in dating.

Check out the full story here
The Underdog
The Underdog

Oddly Satisfying ASMR Blends in a BlendJet 2 Portable Blender

BlendJet, Logical Position

BlendJet is a small startup that isn’t even five years old - one of the founders was actually a popular YouTube car content creator. This campaign rose to the top against bigger more established brands because the unique blend of ASMR, wacky product demo, and humor was spot on for the YouTube platform and the content enticed viewers to not only watch but to buy! This is an inspiring case of how smaller brands can break through.

Check out the full story here