Shell Lights the Way with Top Prize at the 2018 World Media Awards

The winners across the eight categories of the 2018 World Media Awards were announced last night at an exclusive VIP event held at The Ham Yard Hotel in London. Hosted by the World Media Group, the World Media Awards, now in their third year, are the only global awards to recognise brands, agencies and media partners who, together, create the most effective cross-platform, cross-border, content-driven advertising campaigns.

The biggest winner on the night was Shell, whose global campaign ‘Shell Brand GravityLight & Bedtime Stories’ created by MediaCom, picked up the World Media Awards Grand Prix, as well as winning the World Media Award for the Corporate Influencer category. Shell’s campaign was in conjunction with GravityLight, a foundation which aims to improve the lives of people without electricity by providing clean, safe and affordable lighting. They embarked on a 50-day GravityLight roadshow across Kenya, capturing the progress of the roadshow through video and social media, and also created animated videos of GravityLight ‘bedtime stories’ told by high profile influencers, such as singers Pixie Lott in the UK and Luan Santana in Brazil – all of which created strong consumer connections globally and transformed brand perceptions.

“The World Media Awards are a fantastic platform for demonstrating the value content offers brands for telling a powerful story that can resonate around the world, whether you are in London, Lagos or Kenya, ” said Wendy Orhan, Senior Brand Communications Manager at Shell. “We were amongst stiff competition with so many fantastic entries this year, so to walk away with the Grand Prix is a real coup, and testament to the amazing work of all the team who worked on this campaign including Gravity Light and MediaCom.”

A panel of 24 senior jurors from leading advertisers, agencies and publishers, presided over by four head judges - Arif Durrani, Executive Editor for EMEA at Bloomberg Media Group, Jodie Stranger, CEO UK Group and President Global Clients EMEA at Starcom, Publicis Media, John Rudaizky, Partner, Global Brand and Marketing Leader at EY and Jon Gittings, Chief Strategy Officer, Americas at MediaCom  - had the difficult task of selecting the eight category winners and Grand Prix winner from the many entries that were received from around the world.

Emma Winchurch-Beale, President of the World Media Group and International Sales Director at the Washington Post commented, “For all the World Media Group members, great journalism and excellent storytelling, using honest and authentic voices from around the world, are of paramount importance every day.  In fact, as the World Media Group celebrates its 20th Anniversary this year, we can say it’s driven us for 20 years! That’s why it’s been such a pleasure this year to see the amazing entries that embody these values, with Shell being a very worthy winner.”

For more information on the World Media Awards and to see the winning entries in full, visit www.wm-awards.com/2018winners.

Entered by PHD Germany

Credits: FUSE Omnicom Media Group, Google

“This was a bold strategy and the client took a risk based on strong insights and a clear understanding of the target market.

Entered by The Economist Group

“This partnership created a genuine tool, and the choice of partnership was crucial to its impact.  The tool lives beyond the campaign to help improve our world.”

Entered by Wall Street Journal [WSJ Custom Studios] and National Geographic

Credits: Atomic, Wavemaker

Entered by MediaCom

“This platform targeted an ambitious audience of future influencers.  It was a very well thought through strategy, with strong engagement strategies generated by the creative approach.”

Entered by Spark Foundry

Credits: Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Mashable

“This campaign had a rock solid strategy, leading to an unexpected combination of media selection and portfolio of content which delivered the results.”

Entered by KR Media France [GroupM]

Credits: National Geographic

“This entry demonstrated great execution on an ambitious strategy, with a rich, indulgent and evocative creative exploration of experiential content and media.  It had an elegant approach to tying the Silk Road to the brand which created differentiation from other Silk Road content.”

Entered by MediaCom

Credits: Discovery Networks Latin America

“This campaign was cleverly translated to provide relevance to local LatAm markets – it extended the values of female empowerment presented in the film and engaged effectively with the target audience.  As Gal Gadot put it: to be a wonder woman, you don’t have to have super powers.”

Entered by Vizeum

Credits: Engine

“This entry demonstrated a strong creative approach in a challenging category.  The client’s objective was to differentiate itself from the competition and the campaign achieves this.”

Entered by Sansir and Mensch

“This was a simple and genius idea, engaging the population of the Faroe Islands in a campaign to save their language, creating a viral campaign which generated awareness of a little-known territory.”

Entered by Dagmar

Entered by MediaCom

“The judges admired the sensitive and creative approach to repositioning brand perceptions of Shell as a company with purpose, creating an impact.”