Mindshare has topped the chart as the best performing network with 47 shortlisted entries in this year’s Festival of Media APAC Awards, followed by MediaCom with 28 listings and PHD with 23.

Geographically, Australia leads the country chart with 33 shortlisted entries, followed by India with 31 and China with 24. Out of 17 entering countries, a total of 13 are represented on the shortlist.

By individual agency office, Mindshare China achieved an impressive 17 entries, followed by UM Australia and Mindshare India, both with 13 entries represented.

Unilever dominates the brand count with an outstanding 28 entries. The Coca-Cola Company and P&G are also represented well with 10 entries each.

Over the last three weeks, more than 60 judges from leading brands, media agencies, specialist companies and media owners evaluated the quality of the campaigns to determine this year’s shortlist. The winners will be chosen by a final jury chaired by Susie Wong, Director of Performance & Programmatic Marketing of IBM Asia-Pacific.

Following the dominance of Asian campaigns at Festival of Media’s Best of 2017 Awards, where three of five trophies were awarded to the APAC region, Festival of Media APAC Awards 2018 is launching four special awards to find the most impactful media idea in the four key regions across APAC: South East Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines); South Asia (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka); East Asia (Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea and South Korea); and Oceania (Australia, New Zealand and their pacific island neighbours). The four winners will automatically be entered into the most relevant category at this year’s Festival of Media Global Awards in Rome.

Award winners will be announced at the Festival of Media APAC Awards ceremony on March 15, 2018 at Novotel Singapore Clarke Quay.

Check out the full shortlist below [we’ll be updating this with links to the full case studies being added over the next few weeks]:

Last year marked a watershed year for digital brand advertising with factors including trust, transparency, safety, measurement, user experience, consolidation, Facebook/Google dominance and the use of data all up for debate.     

Throw in a wobbly economy, Brexit (ahem), GDPR and the welcome, but as yet un-established changes brought by the Coalition for Better Advertising, and 2018 is set to further confuse the industry and its clients.  

The need to effectively press CTRL+ALT+DEL for the long-term benefit of all concerned is real and it is now, as the brands that succeed in the new digital landscape will be those that take a step back and carefully weigh up all the influences in play.  

Brands, agencies, media owners and digital/marketing specialists have been given a final chance to enter this year’s Festival of Media Global Awards 2018 – with an extended entry deadline until Feb 15, 2018. 

With a number of significant changes to entry categories and the awards entry site, the Festival of Media Global Awards 2018 has evolved in line with the transformation of the sector.

Amongst the changes, the traditional four pillars of the awards have now been condensed into three: Media, Content, Insight & Technology. Each will have their own specialist juries made up of industry experts from around the world of agencies, media owners, advertising and tech companies and representing inclusivity.

Delhi-NCR’s premier music school Bridge Music Academy is taking a stand against racism with an integrated campaign that includes a film featuring a specially-built keyboard with no black keys.

Returning to work after maternity leave can be challenging for many new mums – regaining the art of holding an adult conversation, for example, for longer than the five minutes it takes the Tesco driver to deliver shopping, or learning to think above and beyond how many nappies you’ve changed that day.  

However, the real challenge lies in employer attitudes and the need for a mass culture shift. 

I’m one of the lucky mums who works for a marketing agency that values the important contribution we make in terms of skills, experience, commitment and loyalty. I’ve been with the business for 10 years (minus two years maternity leave) and my colleagues currently share 23 babies of various ages between them – almost half of the company.  

Is the business suffering as a result? Hardly! Revenues are increasing year on year, and we’re repeatedly winning industry awards for our work. So why don’t more employers take this approach? 

On these cold Winter days, there’s nothing worse than being stuck at a bus stop in the freezing cold as you watch every other bus on the route come and go while the countdown timer slowly ticks down for your bus to arrive…

Enter Coca-Cola.

While an ice-cold refreshing bottle of Coca-Cola is the last thing on your mind at this particular point in time, commuters in Kazakhstan might tell you different.

36% of consumers like a brand more when they run ads that break gender stereotyping and 25% are more likely to make a purchase from that brand as a result, according to some research we stumbled across from Choozle.

The findings were part of a survey looking at consumer sentiment towards brands that actively break stereotypes, the impact of ad copy versus creative with regard to consumer perception of stereotypes, how it affects purchase behaviour and whether the ad industry should be held responsible for breaking gender stereotypes.

Check out all of the key highlights in the infographic below: