PHNX Awards: Grands Prix to BETC Havas Brazil,Cappuccino/Weber Shandwick, Dentsu Creative France, The Bold Group

The 2026 AdForum PHNX Awards has announced its winners withcraft and ingenuity showing up as the winning combination as jurors looked for that extra level of attention that elevated the good to the great. It was also a triumphant year for Brazil, which won two Grand Prix.

The craft advantage was clearly on display in the FILM GRAND PRIX, which was awarded to Invisible Stain by BETC Havas in Brazil for Vanish. The animated film shows how a juice stain on the young hero’s sweater is a clue to the bigger emotional stain of being bullied at school. But the film also depicts the power of love to defeat the “stain monsters”. It continues the Reckitt brand’s series of purpose-led campaigns.

Jurors also praised the craft element of the DIGITAL GRAND PRIX, which went to Cappuccino/Weber Shandwick, again in Brazil, for its T-Search campaign for the NGO Mães da Sé. Inspired by bootleg tees, the campaign replaced the faces of pop culture icons with AI-generated images of missing kids. Sold on the very streets where the children disappeared, the T-shirts – which featured eye-grabbing graphics and typography – became a media phenomenon that inspired even the government to back the search.

The DESIGN GRAND PRIX was awarded to The Bold Group from Saudi Arabia for Hold What Matters. The new Zumi bottle is a reinterpretation of a 1,600-year-old tradition: the carrying of Zamzam, the sacred water of Makkah, in a vessel called the Dorag. In the modern world the ritual had faded, but Zumi brings it back in a form that is both contemporary and timeless.

Dentsu Creative, France’s bold and unexpected project, The Covert Recruiter, won the STRATEGY & TECHNIQUE GRAND PRIX. The French Army needed to recruit cyber soldiers. But how do you recruit hackers who operate under the radar? You place an irresistible flaw in your digital campaign and lure them into hacking it, leading them down a rabbit hole into a complex online game. The campaign also won Gold in the new WTF category, in search of the unprecedented.

The jury decided not to award Grand Prix for PRINT or GOOD CAUSES this year, as they felt the Gold winners were equally deserving and chose not to single one out.

AdForum launched the PHNX Awards during lockdown in 2020 to celebrate the resilience of creativity. Since then ,it has evolved into one of the most unusual shows in the awards landscape. Its diverse jury is made up not only of creatives, but planners, executives, clients, PRs, marketers, consultants – experts from every corner of our industry.

This year, close to 1000 jurors voted on the work online. The Grand Prix winners were chosen after live debates.

The Grand Prix winners were:

FILM: Invisible Stain for Vanish by BETC Havas, Brazil