Saatchi & Saatchi takes Grand Effie and Agency of the Year at the 2025 Effie Awards Hong Kong

Saatchi & Saatchi Hong Kong wins Grand Effie and Agency of the Year at 2025 Effie Awards Hong Kong

The 21^st Effie Awards Hong Kong celebrated the city’s most effective marketing campaigns at a dinner gala held at Hopewell Hotel in Wan Chai. Saatchi & Saatchi Hong Kong took home the top honours as Grand Effie and Most Effective Agency of the Year.

The agency’s campaign ‘HSBC One x T1 – For Every Legendary One’ for HSBC won the Grand Effie in the Digital: Engaged Community – Products/Services category for its innovative community engagement approach. The creative shop claimed seven trophies in total, including a Grand, a Gold, one Silver and four Bronzes.

DDB Group Hong Kong followed with five wins to take home a Gold and four Silvers for the 50 Benches for McDonald’s Hong Kong work, which is credited with reviving Ronald McDonald benches across the city for the brand’s 50th anniversary. The campaign was also a close Grand Effie contender, recognised for turning nostalgia into measurable brand impact.

In total, 25 trophies were awarded, including one Grand Effie, two Golds, six Silvers and 16 Bronzes, along with 17 Merit certificates. Jury included 28 brand and agency executives, chaired by Connie Chan, chief growth officer, APAC at Stagwell.

“Chairing this year’s Effie Awards Hong Kong jury was a powerful reminder of what our industry can achieve when creativity is matched with strategic intent,” Chan said. “The most outstanding campaigns didn’t just deliver results—they also demonstrated a deep understanding of cultural context, community engagement, and brand purpose.”

McDonald's HK was a close contender for the Grand Effie; the brand's 50 benches campaign won widely across categories

Inside the jury room: AI and the sameness

Campaign caught up with grand juror Andreas Moellmann, a brand consultant and longtime Effie judge, said the process was “very standardised, structured by Global Effies,” but stressed that local context was crucial for wins.

“If the local relevance isn’t explained clearly in the entries, jurors can’t understand why something’s effective,” he said. “To give you an example, an entry stated a 2% market share growth might – now that might sound small, but if you’re a brand that has been grinding for five years to move half a per cent, that’s a big deal.”

Moellmann described the Grand Effie debate as evenly split between HSBC and McDonald’s.

“The debate was about flawless execution versus creative distinctiveness,” he said. “HSBC’s campaign was comprehensive and McDonald’s was smaller and uniquely theirs. They brought back the Ronald McDonald benches, turned nostalgia into a cultural moment, and proved it worked. That combination of strategy, creativity and result was more convincing. The jury was heavily divided.”

In the end, HSBC walked away with the top metal of the evening.

Moellman also noted the rise of AI-assisted entries, estimating that 70–80% showed some form of AI use. He candidly shared the problem of writing entries with AI.

“AI raises the baseline of quality, but it also creates sameness,” he said. “You can tell when something’s been over-polished by a machine rather than written by someone with passion.”

For entrants, his advice was simple:

“Use AI as a helper, not a ghostwriter. The jury process becomes very boring if you have to read multiple AI-written entries. And the jury can tell when something feels human. What wins isn’t the prettiest paragraph—it’s the clearest, most human story about why the work mattered.”

All winners and finalists will appear on the Global Effie website and contribute to the Effie Effectiveness Index, ranking the world’s most effective marketers and agencies. The Association of Accredited Advertising Agencies of Hong Kong (HK4As) has organised the Effie Awards locally since 2004.

The full list of winners is available here.