In a significant achievement for the network’s media practice, dentsu's specialist agencies have been shortlisted for eight campaigns at the 2025 Performance Marketing Awards. Carat, iProspect, and dentsu X have all been recognised for their innovative work across data utilisation, lead generation, programmatic advertising, and affiliate marketing.
Carat secured three shortlists with campaigns that transformed traditional marketing approaches:
Kellanova x Special K: Data-driven sales growth
Category: Best Use of Data & Insight
Facing Special K's declining relevance amid socio-economic challenges, Carat took an unconventional approach. Rather than relying on traditional creativity, they developed a data-driven strategy using insights from multiple specialist partners. By segmenting audiences into Premium Shoppers, Busy Families, and Price Conscious Shoppers, Carat tailored messages to address each group's unique needs. The campaign utilised cutting-edge tools from Experian, Circana, and LiveRamp in a secure cleanroom environment to craft targeted media strategies and optimise creative relevance, with execution primarily across Meta platforms.
Co-op Food Membership: Lead generation transformation
Category: Best Lead Generation Campaign
The Co-op Membership campaign evolved significantly from its 2022 origins. Initially hampered by limited CPL strategy and traditional affiliate publishers, by 2024, Carat implemented a transformed approach. The refreshed strategy focused on driving high-quality leads through cost-efficient methods, combining traditional affiliate publishers with new email partners. Carat introduced an always-on CPL model with diverse publisher partnerships to increase memberships while optimising budget allocation. This data-driven framework created a sustainable, scalable lead generation system through innovative approaches and strategic partner collaboration.
Hilton: Full-Funnel Social Strategy
Category: Best Full Funnel Strategy
Carat's partnership with Hilton in 2024 focused on proving social media's value across the full marketing funnel. Their two-pronged approach included: 1) developing an innovative, creative strategy centred on cultural relevancy to elevate Hilton against competitors and improve brand favourability, and 2) creating a progressive intent model to guide users with higher intent signals into performance-based activity. The sophisticated testing framework leveraged data to maximise algorithmic efficiency and demonstrated incremental revenue generation at every funnel stage. Their test-and-learn methodology showed the importance of running brand and performance elements together.
The 2025 Performance Marketing Awards showcase dentsu's commitment to measurable, data-driven marketing approaches that deliver business results across diverse client categories. Winners will be announced on May 14, 2025, in London.
You can read the full shortlist here: https://performancemarketingawards.co.uk/shortlist/.
