As the global creative industry increasingly finds itself balancing technological efficiency, AI automation and the need for genuine emotional impact, this year’s PHNX Awards results once again demonstrated that the strongest ideas are still the ones capable of combining craft, culture and a powerful human or social context.
AdForum has announced the Grand Prix winners of the seventh edition of the PHNX Awards, a competition originally launched during the 2020 lockdown as a response to the industry’s need to preserve a space for international recognition and collaboration despite the global crisis. Since then, PHNX has evolved into one of the more distinctive shows in the awards landscape, particularly because of its jury structure, which includes not only creatives but also strategists, clients, PR professionals, consultants, marketers and experts from across the wider communications industry.
This year’s edition brought together nearly 1,000 jurors who evaluated the work online, while the Grand Prix winners were selected after live debates.
One of the most talked-about winners was the FILM Grand Prix, awarded to “Invisible Stain” for Vanish, created by BETC Havas in Brazil. The animated film uses the metaphor of a juice stain on a child’s sweater to tell a much larger story about the emotional consequences of bullying and social isolation. The project is part of a broader series of purpose-led campaigns developed for Reckitt, with jurors particularly praising the level of craft and emotional precision behind the storytelling.
Brazil also secured the DIGITAL Grand Prix with the campaign “T-Search” by Cappuccino/Weber Shandwick for NGO Mães da Sé. Inspired by the aesthetics of bootleg T-shirts, the campaign replaced pop culture icons with AI-generated images of missing children. The shirts were sold in the same streets where the children had disappeared, and the project quickly grew into a broader media phenomenon that eventually received institutional support from the government.
The DESIGN Grand Prix went to Saudi agency The Bold Group for the project “Hold What Matters” created for the Zumi bottle. The work reinterprets a more than 1,600-year-old tradition of carrying Zamzam, the sacred water of Makkah, in a vessel known as the Dorag. Rather than simply reproducing a historical object, the project attempts to merge contemporary design with cultural symbolism through a product that feels both modern and timeless.
In the STRATEGY & TECHNIQUE category, the Grand Prix was awarded to Dentsu Creative France for the campaign “The Covert Recruiter” developed for the French Army. The project was created in response to the challenge of recruiting cyber soldiers and hackers who are almost impossible to reach through conventional communication methods. Instead of building a traditional recruitment campaign, the team intentionally embedded a security flaw into the digital experience in order to attract hackers and lead them into a complex online game that simultaneously functioned as a recruitment and selection process.
The campaign also received a Gold award in the newly introduced WTF category, created for projects that attempt to push the boundaries of what the industry typically expects.
This year, the jury decided not to award Grand Prix distinctions in the PRINT and GOOD CAUSES categories, explaining that none of the Gold winners stood out strongly enough above the others.
Alongside the Grand Prix winners, the festival also announced its overall honours. The title of Agency of the Year went to MUW / Saatchi & Saatchi from Slovakia, Independent Agency of the Year was awarded to Brazilian agency Tech and Soul, while DENTSU CREATIVE was named Network of the Year.
The full list of Gold, Silver and Bronze winners is available on the official PHNX Awards website
