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 — long form to short form 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.
Questions? Contact us at ytworks-in@google.com
Categories
Masterful Media Planning
Celebrating the campaign that best demonstrates brilliant & innovative media planning that drove business results.
Did a stroke of media genius spark the idea? Were your ads contextually spot on? Did your media planner nail your audience insights? Did your media plan showcase an intelligent use of YouTube formats?
This award recognizes the vital role of media strategy that makes all the difference to creative effectiveness.
Local Connection
Celebrating the campaign that champions authentic representation of the regionally diverse consumers of India.
This campaign aimed at reaching the heart of the users by reaching out to them on YouTube beyond the metros, or in a local language of their choice, or better - both ! Show us how your campaign leveraged these unique geographic signals and/or local language prowess to deliver branding & business results.
Big Screen, Bigger Results
Celebrating the campaign that drove exceptional results by reaching audiences watching YouTube on their Connected TV screens.
As people spend more time watching YouTube on internet enabled TVs (Connected TV), there are more opportunities to reach your audience in new and immersive ways. We’re on the hunt for YouTube Connected TV-first campaigns that use the big screen to make a big impact on their branding and awareness objectives. Campaigns can span across multiple screens (desktop, mobile and TV screens) or can be limited to Connected TVs only.
Force For Good
Celebrating the campaign that best demonstrates proven impact on social causes that goes deeper than the bottom line.
Making a difference to issues that matter to the community can have a bigger impact than returns in the long run. Here, we’re looking for campaigns that supported a good cause and drove great results. If your campaign put the cause first and the brand second, we want to hear from you.
Multiformat Storytelling
Celebrating the campaign that best demonstrates the ability of adapting a brand's video campaign to the evolving viewer contexts — whether it’s on the go on mobile or relaxed in the living room.
From product launches on live streams to fun & informative YouTube Shorts, to watching Connected TV content with family and friends - audiences on YouTube are moving fluidly from screen to screen and experiencing the content they love in multiple ways. We want to see how you flexed your brand's messaging for these different viewing contexts by adopting the multi screen multiformat approach - Think how you complimented your YouTube campaign with creator led YouTube Shorts or brought the best of both long form & short form ads (Shorts) to life & drove business results!
Brands X Creators
Celebrating the campaign that best demonstrates brands behaving like creators themselves OR collaborating with creators — by tapping into YouTube formats, pop culture & video trends.
There are two themes through which a campaign can qualify for this award :-
Brands as Creators : We aren’t just looking for a channel with some brand-heavy video ads. We’re looking for brands who can show us they’re part of our ongoing platform story. Brands who release regular content that gives our audiences value, entertainment, inspiration or information - in the same way a creator would.
Brands collaborating with YouTube Creators : Campaigns that demonstrate strategic and creative collaboration between creators and brands that ultimately drive incredible social buzz and positive brand associations. Collaborating creators should have a YouTube channel with a sizable audience and self created content pipeline.
Tech Meets Creative
Celebrating the campaign that best demonstrates the innovative use of technology by a brand to effectively meet their campaign objective and in turn create benchmark work. Technology should impact the outcome of the campaign and can be integrated to scale up, automate, or to break through clutter.
Grand Prix
Celebrating the most effective, outstanding and innovative campaign of them all - from insight to media to creative
The Grand Prix is our top prize - awarded to a campaign entry that’s particularly standout in multiple ways. This is not a category you can enter, but it is a category you can hope to win if you can show that your campaign ticks 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.
Our 2023 Judges
Anupriya Acharya
CEO
Publicis Groupe South Asia
Arun Iyer
Founder and Creative Partner
Spring Marketing Capital
Dheeraj Sinha
Group CEO - India and South Asia,
FCB
Dilen Gandhi
Managing Director,
Tasty Bite Eatables Ltd.
Hephzibah Pathak
Executive Chairperson
Ogilvy India
Karthik Srinivasan
Communications Strategy Consultant
PG Aditiya
Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer
Talented
Priti Murthy
President
Group M Nexus
Ravi Desai
Director Mass and Brand Marketing
Amazon
Shekhar Banerjee
Chief Client Officer & Office Head - West
Wavemaker, India
Smita Salgaonkar
Ex Country Manager
Data & Digital Media, India
Media.Monks
Swati Bhattacharya
Creative Chairperson
FCB India
Tanmay Bhat
Comedian, YouTuber, Ad writer
Tejas Apte
Media Head
Hindustan Unilever
Contest begins
May 20, 2023
Submission Closed
Winners announced
September 2023
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 share the business context, approach & results of your campaign in relevance to the award categories you enter. 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 (business challenge/objectives), middle (campaign approach), and end (impact).
- Stick to simple and concise.
- Include critical context around your creative strategy (like YouTube formats & tools, tech, insights etc.).
- 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.
How to enter
Identify your most effective YouTube campaigns from 2022, review the Terms and Conditions, and fill out the submission form below.
YouTube Works is easy to enter. Even better, it’s free.
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.
Make sure you go through the Submission Guidelines before filling the form.
Questions? Contact us at ytworks-in@google.com
2023 Winners
YouTube Works Awards India 2023 celebrated brands and agencies who have created the most innovative and effective campaigns on YouTube in the face of how communication has changed over the last few years. This year, a jury of 70+ industry experts helped pick our finalists across 7 diverse categories including the newly launched award for Best Multiformat Storytelling.
The Gold & Silver Award winners including our top prize - The Grand Prix were chosen by our Grand Jury to be the best of the best. All winning campaigns were living proof of how partnering with YouTube and deploying its AI-powered solutions can help engage a diverse audience while also driving impressive business results.
Spotify On toh Mazza On
Spotify India, Lodestar-UM, Interactive Avenues
As one of India’s leading audio streaming platform aiming to grow its younger audience base in Tier 2 and 3 cities, Spotify India wanted to stand out with entertaining storytelling and precision marketing.They identified trending music across audience personas & city specific insights and delivered it through short skits that highlighted music’s role in daily life. Spotify India catered to both early adopters and new users with YouTube’s contextual targeting,leveraging skippable & bumper ads layered with connected TV audiences. The Results - 75% coverage of Music Lovers on YouTube , +25% growth in Gen Z audience and ~15% increase in MAUs
Oreo Bring Back 2011
Mondelez - Oreo, Leo Burnett & Wavemaker
Oreo’s “Bring Back 2011” campaign tried to capture the curiosity of a billion Indians through MS Dhoni’s fandom when his retirement speculations were rife. They cleverly used YouTube Masthead and livestream to capture audience attention, and invite them to view their ad that brought back the nostalgia of the 2011 Cricket World Cup win while cheekily connecting it with the launch year of Oreo in India. This unique approach not only helped Oreo touch hearts but also helped them gain 6M views in less than 24 hours leading to 22% growth in sales value, and $3M in earned PR value during the campaign period.
Stop the Beauty Test
Hindustan Unilever - Dove, Mindshare, Chrome Pictures, Ogilvy
Dove’s ‘Stop the Beauty Test’ aimed to reinvigorate brand love amongst urban women through emotional connections. Strategically launched on Daughter's Day to challenge beauty based judgements faced by Indian teenagers and inspire action, Dove used a YouTube-first approach for its purposeful marketing initiative via long form storytelling & CTV targeting. The campaign reached 100M+ households and gained 10X website traffic to Dove’s Self-Esteem Program, which empowers teenagers with the knowledge and confidence to counter the negative impact of the beauty tests they face.
Proud Sponsors of Ground Staff
Mondelez - Cadbury Dairy Milk, Wavemaker India, Ogilvy
As an established chocolate brand, how could Cadbury meaningfully restore its distinct mental availabilit during IPL, without straying away from its brand ethos? Cadbury's #ProudSponsorsOfTheGroundStaff campaign stood out amidst the typical cricket ads by celebrating the unsung heroes: the IPL ground staff. Cadbury turned to YouTube to launch their one-of-a-kind collab that not just inspired viewers but also evoked empathy to spark conversations. Leveraging YouTube’s ubiquitous reach and multi-screen, multiformat capabilities, their purposeful campaign helped achieve 45% sales growth in the campaign period (vs last year) and 130M engagements across touchpoints.
Real people, Real stories
upGrad
As an Edtech company aiming to improve consideration during a sluggish economic environment upGrad wanted to expand customer base in non-metros - especially in AP and Telangana. upGrad's "Real People, Real Stories" campaign spotlighted their own alumni and success stories - departing from scripted approaches. By using vernacular language films, target frequency and YouTube’s geo-targeting capabilities, upGrad's messaging resonated with their audience in key regional markets helping them create authentic user connections and earning a #1 position in the share of search and an impressive relative lift of 17% in consideration.
#ChhoteMeethePal
Hindustan Unilever - Pond's, Mindshare, Ogilvy
Now more than ever users are embracing a boundaryless viewing experience - across screens and formats. Pond’s #ChhoteMeethePal campaign used this insight beautifully to reach beauty buffs during festive season to promote its BB+ cream The campaign used longform ads and YouTube Shorts layered with interest-based targeting, to deliver personalised ads showcasing their product and festive-ready looks. The campaign unlocked 13% increase in market share and 80% boost in sales through the campaign.
Diwali Delight
Tanishq, Hiveminds
As an offline jewelry brand aiming to drive store footfalls during the festive season, Tanishq wanted to drive discovery via digital and maximize their reach in key regional marketts. To resonate with each key market uniquely Tanishq customized their messaging with vernacular storytelling and geo targeting on YouTube adapting their longer brand films into multi-screen & multi-format videos - Leveraging YouTube Shorts with Skippable & non skippable formats.The Results - 63.3M Audience reach (v/s 45M planned reach), 1.8X growth in Store Visits (v/s previous year) and 26% uplift in Search volumes (during campaign)
Smile out Loud
Colgate Palmolive India, WPPCP, VMLY&R
Colgate Visible White O2 wanted to engage with urban women, to establish teeth-whitening as part of the elevated beauty experience, by showcasing real women who embraced their confident smiles and perfectly imperfect beauty. Using AI driven creative tools, they personalised their ads for 40 audience affinities and deployed these contextually-relevant films using YouTube’s Connected TV ecosystem to reach premium audiences. This hyper personalised strategy layered with CTV solutions unlocked 60% incr. reach to TV, 4X uplift in branded searches, and 46% growth in avg. monthly sales.
Traditional to Digital First Campaign
OLX Autos, DWAO
OLX Autos knew their customers were more digital savvy than ever and needed to strengthen brand USP amongst car sellers. Considering the affinity for auto lovers on YouTube they pivoted to a YouTube-first strategy, leveraging its CTV reach and DV360 media consolidation to help them scale to potential high value customers. With ads starring Rohit Shetty and Sharman Joshi to inject star power and humour into their creatives OLX unlocked impressive rsults - 88% of CTV reach incremental to TV, 15% increase in organic and direct appointments, 13% improvement in lead-to-appointment conversions
Shops for Shopless
Mondelez - Cadbury Celebrations, Wavemaker, DeltaX, Ogilvy
Cadbury's 'Shops For Shopless' campaign exemplified the best use of personalisation at scale by turning the QR codes on their Celebrations boxes into a local discovery platform for hawkers during festive season. With YouTube's geotargeting solutions, the brand turned every marketing touchpoint into a nudge for customers to scan and support hawkers in their local area. Cadbury’s shared value marketing approach and YouTube’s Tech x Creative prowess did not just result in generating over 3.2M unique scans, but also a 15% increase in sales for the brand
The D Series Project
Reliance General Insurance, ^atom Network
The D Series Project by Reliance General Insurance used Tech x Creative to spark conversations around organ donation. Using data driven analysis of music on YouTube that featured lyrics with eyes, heart etc. and precisely targeting contextualised pre-roll ads, the brand introduced the idea of organ donation to music lovers in a playful but relevant way. The campaign helped generate leads surpassing expectations with 400% more clicks to their microsite vs target.
Chef it up
Licious, Monk Entertainment, YourFoodLab
To establish itself as the go-to place for high-quality meat v/s offline shops, Licious adopted a content-first approach by creating a 4-part content IP and Shorts on YouTube starring Chef Sanjyot Keer and popular content creators. By integrating its products authentically into cooking challenges the brand struck a chord with its captive food loving audience effortlessly, achieving a cumulative reach of 15.5M in the first month itself coupled with 50% increase in YouTube searches during the campaign.