Manulife defends title, CMO and Marketing Innovator of the year crowned at MEA 2020

Manulife Singapore claimed the coveted "Marketer of the Year" crown for the second year running at the Marketing Excellence Awards 2020 with four gold, six silver and five bronze trophies.

The financial services brand pulled off the impressive feat with help of three strong campaigns. Both “Reimagining Ancient Tragedies,” and “Life Goes On: Sneaker Drop” were highly received by the awards jury, but it was their campaign “#Unbroken” that stole the show with six wins, including golds for Excellence in Digital Marketing, Excellence in Performance Marketing, and Excellence in Programmatic Marketing.

Chery Lim, Manulife’s VP, Head of Brand, Marketing Communications and Sponsorship, also secured hardware for herself, bringing home silver in coveted individual category Marketing Innovator of the Year.

Coming in second place was The Coca-Cola Company (Singapore) who bagged a perfect 7 gold trophies. Six of those gold were for the same campaign “The Coca-Cola Galactic Bottles” winning across categories such as Excellence in Customer Engagement, Excellence in Marketing Innovation, and Excellence in Viral Marketing.

The other gold went to Coca-Cola’s integrated marketing communications director Lim Kean Yew taking top honours for Marketing Innovator of the Year.

Only 5 points separated Coca-Cola (28 points) from Manulife (33) this year.

NTUC FairPrice and NTUC Income came in third and fourth, respectively. FairPrice impressed the jury with 5 gold and 1 bronze. Three of those gold went to the campaign “Make a Fresh Start.” Income grabbed 2 gold, 3 silver and 1 bronze, including a rainbow (gold, silver and bronze) for their heartfelt campaign “The Last Sandwich Generation.”

In another first individual category, CMO of the Year, the gold went to Standard Chartered Bank’s Emma Sheller. She was lauded by the judges for demonstrating excellent execution that helped optimise business health, unquestionable leadership, motivation and support for her teams, and stabilising business performance in times of extreme uncertainty. CMO of the Year’s silver award went to Marcus Chew from Income, while bronze went to Workday’s Geoff Kelly.

This year's Marketing Excellence Awards was announced virtually to an audience of more than 400 viewers.

Judged solely by an independent panel of respected industry experts, and updated each year with new categories that cater to the modern marketer, MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s Marketing Excellence Awards has become the premier platform for brands to showcase their marketing excellence in campaigns across Singapore.

This year, the awards were judged by 29 senior marketers from leading brands including AIA, Citibank, DHL, Google, Johnson & Johnson and many more.

The Marketing team would like to extend a huge thank you to our entire judging panel for giving up their valuable time to thoroughly review and score every single entry. Congratulations to all of our finalists and outstanding winners, we look forward to seeing more of your excellence in 2020!

You can view the full list of winners here.