Smarties winners announced

More than 25 Gold Smarties were awarded at the MMA South Africa Smarties Awards. The standout campaign of the year, the Smarties Best in Show, went to the Nando’s Bright Sides campaign, which cleverly tapped into consumers’ load-shedding pressures with a cross-functional focus on creating an exceptional customer experience at the heart of the campaign. The Shoprite group of companies/ShopriteX was named Brand of the Year. 

The Smarties Awards are the only marketing awards where business impact is weighted highest in the judging criteria (40% of the score), with the judges’ scoring of strategy, execution and creativity weighted as 20% each. 

“Since we launched in South Africa 15 years ago, we have focused on awarding excellence in business impact, as this is after all what sets one great campaign apart from another,” says Sarah Utermark, MMA South Africa country director. “We ensure that every piece of work judged shows a clear return on investment or return on adspend. What this means is that we look for what moved the business’s financial needle, or made a tangible and sustainable impact on the organisation.”  

Authenticity, purpose and community have never been more important than now, she says. “The Shoprite Group’s initiatives around increasing and rewarding customer loyalty through its Xtra Savings programme has resonated with consumers across the country. Shoprite continues to be at the forefront of creating positive customer experience through the use of highly innovative tech.”  

This year seven new categories were added to the awards programme, all relating to the rise of experiential tech and web 3.0. The purpose of these additions, which include blockchain, nonfungible tokens, intelligent devices and data insights, among other things, is to reflect the ever-expanding media and marketing landscape that is being shaped and moulded by innovation, access to data and changing consumer behaviour, especially through technology, says Luisa Mazinter, Smarties jury chair and MMA South Africa chair emeritus. 

“Each of the winning campaigns brought their A-game to the table and really impressed the judges. Whether they entered the purpose-driven category or impact media, each showcased the very best in class in their industry and are all worthy winners. They revealed an exceptional adoption of new technologies and ways of working. Technology has become an integral part of most successful marketing campaigns, and rightly so. Digital adoption on the continent is growing exponentially, consumer behaviour is changing alongside it, and the growing impact that emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and web 3.0 are having on the delivery of exceptional results is very impressive. We saw some truly fantastic work this year. We salute those agencies that are taking marketing innovation to a new level.’’ 

All entries — bronze, silver and gold — will now be submitted to the international business impact index (BII), which ranks these winning campaigns against their international peers. The results of the BII will be released in the second quarter of 2024. 

This year’s Smarties Awards were sponsored by Takealot Group Advertising, MTN, MultiChoice Group and Standard Bank.  

Here is the full list of winners.

The big take-out: Nando’s Bright Sides campaign won Best in Show while the Shoprite group of companies/ShopriteX was named Brand of the Year at the Smarties Awards.