The winners of the 2026 B&T Awards, presented by Rokt, are a little more than a month away — and we simply cannot contain our excitement.
In this latest instalment of the B&T Awards – The Work series, we’re looking at the finalists for the Best CTV & Video Campaign award.
The jury for this award will be looking for the best use of CTV and digital video in terms of proving measured ROI and meeting quantified business objectives.
The entry should demonstrate how the campaign leveraged CTV and digital video specifically to meet the client’s objectives and deliver results.
As part of each submission, we ask agencies to submit a maximum 300-word condensed version of their entry. Below, it’s pasted verbatim. It’s their take on why they should win. But only the judges will decide.
Last time out, we looked at the Best Direct Response Campaign finalists.
To find out who wins first, make sure you buy your tickets for the B&T Awards. It’s on 27 November 2026 in Sydney.
And don’t forget our live judging day for Agency of the Year and some Leadership and Marketing awards on 5 November, also in Sydney. Click here to see if you’ll need to suit up and present to our formidable in-person jury.
amaysim, ‘The Comparison Story’, amaysim
When a competitor challenged the market leader on network, the telco conversation became a contest between the ‘Big Three’. For amaysim, the opportunity was to give Australians a better choice: a big-network experience, without the hefty price tag.
With limited budget and low brand awareness, we needed to make a memorable impact in the places people relax, watch and decide. CTV gave us the answer. By recreating the scale, familiarity and impact of free-to-air television in the home, we turned a challenger budget into a big-brand moment and brought our value story directly into living rooms across the country.
The Comparison Story used a premium video idea across CTV, online video and performance channels, with smart audience selection helping us reach people already considering their telco options.
The work made a rational comparison feel human, distinctive and easy to act on: why keep paying more when you can switch to amaysim, get massive bonus data and enjoy bigger savings over time?
Get your tickets for the B&T Awards, presented by Rokt, today!
Droga5, part of Accenture Song, Poem, Hearts & Science, SBS, ‘SBS World Cup Watchers’ Rights Association’, Special Broadcasting Service
In 2026, SBS brought the FIFA World Cup to Australia live and free. There was just one catch. With the tournament hosted across Canada, Mexico and the US, 65% of matches would air during Australian work hours. For once, fans wouldn’t have to stay up all night. But they would have to sneak away from their desks.
So, SBS created the World Cup Watchers’ Rights Association: the world’s first organisation dedicated to fighting for every Australian’s right to watch the beautiful game on company time.
The Association had a chairman in Nick Mohammed (Ted Lasso’s Nate the Great), a committee of Matt Okine, Mel Buttle, John Cruickshank and Matilda’s legend Lydia Williams, a website, a LinkedIn page, downloadable workplace resources and even an intern. The WRA gave fans the tools to make their case to the boss, and invited businesses to sign on as FIFA-Friendly workplaces.
Australia joined in. Workers emailed their managers. Employers signed on publicly. And the campaign generated 92 million earned media impressions (80 million above our target of 12 million), and 61% of people who heard about the WRA took action.
Aussies exercised their newfound rights. A lot. More than 4.8 million watched Australia v Paraguay during work hours (278% above target). And 2.8 million tuned in to Mexico v England on a Monday morning (438% above target). Across the tournament, SBS reached 17.3 million Australians in total – its most successful FIFA World Cup coverage ever.
Get your tickets for the B&T Awards, presented by Rokt, today!
Droga5 ANZ, part of Accenture Song, ‘The Happiness List’, Meat & Livestock Australia
In 2025, the World Happiness Report dropped Australia off the Top 10 Happiest Countries list to #11. We disagreed with that. So Australian Lamb did what it does every summer – made a big, bold cinematic ad. But this time, with a bone to pick.
A 3-minute film showed stern ‘International Happiness Auditors’ everything Australia has to be happy about – endless coastlines, ancient cultures, calling strangers “mate” and lamb cutlets.
Knowing victory over the Poms in the Ashes give Australians another dose of happiness, the full 3-minute film premiered in an exclusive televised break during the Sydney Ashes Cricket Test. Commentators throwing to the ad and reacting to it live during the broadcast.
The campaign then rolled out across BVOD, online and cinema screens in all its glory.
The results? 37M total views. Record campaign value sales. And a response from the World Happiness Report.
Get your tickets for the B&T Awards, presented by Rokt, today!
GAME CREATIVE, ‘Mirvac, building the imagine nation’, Mirvac
For more than 50 years Mirvac has shaped where Australians live, work, shop and connect. Outside its own customers, few people knew it. The brand was defined by its individual projects rather than a position of its own, and buyers regularly confused it with competitors, like Meriton.
In 2026 Mirvac launched its first integrated brand campaign, built on a new platform ‘building the imagine nation’. The platform came from a truth inside the business. That ‘Positive change starts with seeing what can be’. Mirvac doesn’t just build it’s assets. It imagines, plans, designs, builds, and then manages them for decades. Standing by their long lasting quality. That approach relies on people who can picture how Australians will live years ahead and build for it now.
To build the Imagine Nation, the work first had to inspire and demonstrate imagination. The film follows a woman through a series of scenes, each rendered in a different artistic style: watercolour, claymation, origami, animation, AI generated dioramas and live action. Tested with System1 before release, the finished film scored 4.3 Stars nationally and the maximum 5.9 Stars among core audiences. It launched on 2 February 2026 across broadcast, outdoor, digital, social and owned channels, into a softening property market with rising interest rates and shifting investor policy.
Six months in, the campaign has met a target set for twelve. Brand familiarity grew 5%, bringing 1.1 million more Australians to the brand, and reputation reached 74.4, the highest score Mirvac has recorded. Purchase intent rose between 17 and 28% depending on asset class. Brand preference rose 24%. Mirvac is now ahead of competitors on being ‘modern, creative, intelligent and standing out from the crowd’. The film has passed 11.3 million completed views. An additional 154 leads were generated across the business.
Get your tickets for the B&T Awards, presented by Rokt, today!
Hive Creative, ‘Australian Made – Made Right Here’, Australian Made Campaign
The green and gold kangaroo is about as big as Australian icons get. Born in 1986, it has spent four decades as one of the most embedded marks in the country. A big symbol, guarded by a small not-for-profit doing enormous work on very limited budgets.
But the world has grown smaller, and products from anywhere are a click away, especially for younger, tech-savvy buyers. Buying Australian was never just about the product. It’s about your mates’ jobs. Your community. Your country’s future. But there’s a whole generation who inherited the logo without that story. Then COVID, tariff wars and global uncertainty raised the stakes even more.
The Australian Government backed Australian Made to secure our future, pledging $20 million for a national campaign. With no funding previously allocated to domestic activity, there hadn’t been a campaign of this magnitude in decades. Our job: reinvigorate the brand from the strategy up, bring it into 2026, and make Australian Made a symbol this generation, and the next, chooses on purpose.
The recognition was already there. What had faded was the feeling. Three words carried it all: Made Right Here. A phrase small enough to fit on a sticker and big enough to reignite a country’s passion.
Dr Ken Cato’s kangaroo has connected Australians with Australian makers for four decades. You don’t replace equity like that. You release it. So we brought the logo to life. Literally. And sent it on a nationwide tour of the people making Australia. The logo now works harder. Awareness rose, and it converted. Australians didn’t just see the roo again, they went looking for it, swapping imported products for Australian Made ones, and driving new licensee growth.
After 40 years, the logo is still backing Australia. Now the feeling is too.
Get your tickets for the B&T Awards, presented by Rokt, today!
Howatson+Company, ‘Adrift’, Allianz Australia
Insurance brands had made sport a battleground for mental availability. Allianz needed to go further. With category consideration already rising, our opportunity was to move beyond sporting salience and create the meaningful difference needed to drive first-choice preference.
Whilst Australians were doing it tough, a national beacon of hope was growing. The Matildas – a powerful symbol of grit, resilience and inspiration.
Our Football Australia partnership sat at the perfect intersection: a national team synonymous with resilience, a brand built around being there through adversity and a nation looking for inspiration.
Rather than using the partnership simply to make Allianz more visible, we would use the emotion of football to prove what Allianz stands for and hold up a mirror to one of the world’s most resilient nations.
To launch this new sponsorship platform, we evolved our brand promise, ‘Care you can count on’, into a national rally cry: Care never gives up.
This platform unearthed the game’s most powerful stories of resilience: the comebacks.
We found our story in Matildas midfielder Amy Sayer. After an ACL injury kept Amy off the pitch for 457 days, we told not just the story of her return, but everything it took to get there: determination, resilience and the care that never left her side.
In ‘Adrift’, Amy’s recovery became an epic visual metaphor for fighting your way back.
Directed by Oscar-nominated Michael Gracey, set to Sia’s ‘Unstoppable’ and brought to life in a real water tank with world-class VFX, the film became the emotional engine of a national campaign across TV, BVOD, cinema, YouTube, social, digital and OOH as the Women’s Asian Cup swept the nation.
Most importantly, the meaning landed: 89% spontaneous branding, +47% first-choice preference and +50% purchase intent.
One extraordinary comeback, transformed into an extraordinary piece of film.
Get your tickets for the B&T Awards, presented by Rokt, today!
Howatson+Company, ‘Vodafone brand campaign’, Vodafone
Vodafone faced a critical perception challenge. Despite having the product to compete, it remained a distant third in a two-horse telco race. Years of trying to earn consideration had left the brand cautious, less distinctive and a long way from the provocative Vodafone Australians once knew. The problem wasn’t function. It was perception and identity.
And telco advertising wasn’t helping.
The category had gotten away with spinning BS for too long. Beneath all the talk of network, value and coverage sat a powerful pretence: if you wanted a good network experience, you had to pay a premium for it. The Big 2 reinforced that premium with technical jargon, vague proof points and claims disconnected from what people actually cared about.
Vodafone saw an opportunity to do the opposite: make things radically simple.
We returned to something that had always been part of Vodafone’s DNA: liberation. Freeing people from unreliable networks, inflated bills and confusing jargon. Rather than inflate our claims, we simplified them. Rather than soften the brand’s edge, we sharpened it.
The idea: The Big Telco Experience. Without the Big Telco prices.
Then we found the perfect person to say it.
Across three films spanning Network, Value and Roaming, Ali Wong became Vodafone’s unapologetic voice of reason. Her dry, direct style exposed the absurdities Australians had been conditioned to accept from telcos, through equally absurd scenarios.
And people responded. The films beat Australian advertising benchmarks for attention, and Ali’s red attitude achieved 90% brand linkage.
In trying to move Vodafone forward, we rediscovered what had made it distinctive in the first place.
This wasn’t a rebrand… It was a homecoming.
Get your tickets for the B&T Awards, presented by Rokt, today!
Howatson+Company, ‘It’s Not For Everyone’, The Australian Financial Review
As younger, digital-first audiences disengaged from traditional media, the AFR needed to build a community around a new generation of success-driven readers without diluting 160 years of premium authority or losing its corporate heartland.
The insight: what unites the AFR’s audience was never a job title, it’s a relentless drive for progress, wherever success shows up. We moved success from a place to an attitude and by admitting the AFR isn’t for everyone, doubled down on exactly who it is for. “Success isn’t a place. It’s a mindset.”
One campaign, five human stories, told across every video environment that mattered: a hero film following the grit behind three real success stories, extended through stills spanning corporate leadership, technology, fashion, property and agriculture. It ran on the AFR’s first-ever TikTok activity alongside premium CTV placements, with Dynamic Press and OOH dominations carrying the idea into physical spaces and driving audiences into the AFR’s own apps.
The results matched the ambition: 60% unprompted brand breakthrough, 87% brand recall, 64% article-collection engagement driven by new audiences and an 833% return on marketing investment. Turns out, telling people it’s not for everyone is a very good way to get them wanting in.
Get your tickets for the B&T Awards, presented by Rokt, today!
Jack Nimble and Sparro by Brainlabs, ‘Home of 3D Printing’, Jaycar
Jaycar wanted to launch 3D printing as a serious retail category in Australia. That sounds simple, but the category was hard to find in physical retail.
We made Jaycar The Home of 3D Printing.
A place you can go to learn, chat, compare and buy the right setup for you.
Video was central to making that proposition simple. Instead of explaining 3D printing through technical specifications, we could show the journey from an idea in someone’s head to a real object, then connected that possibility directly to the expertise available in Jaycar stores.
Get your tickets for the B&T Awards, presented by Rokt, today!
JimJam Ideas, ‘2000 Days in the Making’, NSW Department of Education
INSIGHT:
Bringing up a child in the first few years can be frightening and often isolating, especially for lower socio-economic, CALD and Indigenous communities who often not have access to child care or appropriate support. While the first 2000 days of a child’s life is vitally important in the developing brains, shaping their future lives, this in itself can be daunting.
IDEA:
In this idea we want to put the 2000 day project in the minds and hearts of every parent in Australia, and demonstrate how those first years are the most crucial in making healthy, well-balanced children. However we want to present this journey in an inclusive, supportive way that’s accessible to all parents no matter what their background.
SOLUTION:
We achieve this by literally bringing these 2000 days to life by seeing children create, interact, laugh, play and make something different every day. We want to show how these simple things (accessible to ALL parents) such as play-based learning and daily interaction can lead to positive brain development and better futures for all children.
RESULTS:
The campaign delivered 23 million impressions and 127,000 clicks to the new parent and carer hub.
Get your tickets for the B&T Awards, presented by Rokt, today!
WiredCo., ‘Boost Mobile: If nobody on screen was working their arse off, we didn’t buy it’, Boost Mobile
Boost Mobile came to us for performance media. We told them the answer was on screen.
Boost Mobile had built one of the most efficient acquisition engines in Australian telco, with roughly 90% of its money chasing people already shopping. It worked beautifully until the pool ran dry, which is when every brand learns that harvesting demand and creating it are different jobs. Consideration was low and falling, and no amount of squeezing performance media or optimisation was going to fix that.
So we moved Boost Mobile to a 60/40 brand-to-performance split and put the brand money on screen. A performance-first client handing more than half its working budget to video it couldn’t attribute was a risk. The timing was awful. WARC found marketers facing cuts were backing performance over brand by 42% to 29%.
But Boost’s product truth was hiding in plain sight. Boost runs the full Telstra Prepaid network, so it works harder than its price suggests. Meanwhile, 978,000 Australians were holding a record 2+ jobs. So we created a brand platform, ‘works its arse off’.
Screens are where you watch Australians work their arses off, so that is what we bought. A whole season of Australian Survivor. The Ashes, Supercars and Bathurst. A 60-second anthem across TV and BVOD, cut to 30s, 15s and a six-second bin chicken. If nobody on the screen was visibly working hard, we didn’t buy it.
Get your tickets for the B&T Awards, presented by Rokt, today!
