The Drum's New Year Honours 2015: Most innovative work of the year from unique Tinder promos to VFX

The Drum's New Year Honours will be teased out each day over the Christmas period, with the list published in full in our first issue of 2016, published on 13 January.

Best use of Tinder: Ex Machina promotion at SxSW

Those marketers who thought Tinder was just for dating were forced to reassess their view of the platform when one adventurous brand flirted with the matchmaking app.

For anyone who fired up the app during this year’s SxSW may have come across a profile for Ava, a New York-based Tinder user with a tendency to ask matches about what makes a person human. However, Ava is in fact the Android character played by Swedish actress Alicia Vikander in sci-fi hit Ex Machina.

Designed to get people talking about the movie’s theme of humanity, the sneaky campaign had many observers debating whether it was a clever tactic or outright deceptive.

Best tech innovation: iOS9

Ad blocking was the story of 2015, but the technology has been around for years, so why the sudden mass hysteria? Well, quite simply, the introduction of iOS9 by iPhone manufacturer Apple, and its potential to let users of the operating system block ads delivered to their mobiles.

Given that Apple is quite tight-lipped when it comes to public speaking, debate around the matter surged, with the prospect of adblockalypse generating more than its fair share of column inches, it’s safe to say this issue has dominated just about every industry conference in advertising.

With ad blocking still largely unresolved as we a new year, iOS9 is clearly the development that shook up the advertising and publishing industries most in 2015.

Best charity innovation: Facebook’s Donate button

Back in 2014, charities realised Facebook was a highly effective force for good after the ALS Ice Bucket campaign dominated newsfeeds.

The social network noticed that charity donations were being made via mobile and across the web despite the video content and user generated pledges’ presence on Facebook. It looked to address this, ensuring such an opportunity would never be missed again.

In August, the donate button was implemented, a call to action which could be established on the pages of charities and non-profits. This made it easier for Joe or Jane Public to become a donor, and boosted the effectiveness of socially driven charity campaigns by coupling content with a call to action.

Best retail app: Asos

It ranks alongside Amazon and eBay as one of the best shopping apps in the world, and for the first time this year Asos took the experience to Chinese consumers as it looks to command a greater share of the global fashion market.

The brand has consistently drawn an envious eye, being among the first to use video in its product pages and having a ‘wish list’ feature that syncs up with the desktop and mobile. Today, some 60 per cent of its traffic comes from mobile devices, while 44 per cent of transactions (it made £1.2bn in sales last year) are placed on mobile platforms.

Personalisation is the key objective for 2015, and the brand is testing out a loyalty programme as it targets £2.5bn in annual sales by 2020. “We have to be awesome on mobile,” says chief executive Nick Beighton. “We have to make the experience more personal to compete with all the other apps and content so that it feels like a best friend recommending you try something new.”

Best use of data: Disney

Disney is using data in multiple ways to identify new revenue streams and means of communicating with new audiences.

The company partnered Winnie the Pooh with Facebook to better understand mothers, using insights around their need states and key occasions to find out how best to target them with helpful content. Plans are also underway to use both Disney and Facebook data sets to serve parents with ideas for activities they can do with their kids.

Meanwhile, Disney’s focus on healthy living is also set to take on a bigger role thanks to its tie-up with Public Health England – the public body is sitting on reams of data that Disney is exploring to understand what it needs to do get kids more active using brands like Star Wars and Frozen.

Best use of VFX: Umbro ‘Glory For all’

Fire, explosions, laser-beam-shooting-eyes… KesselsKramer went all out with its first campaign for Umbro in early 2015.

Unable to compete on budget with the Adidas and Nikes of the world, and lacking the obligatory big name superstar endorsement demanded by the genre, the agency instead turned to special effects wizardry for the launch of the Velocita football boot, and in the process made a mockery of every other football boot advert ever.

The over-the-top visuals looked good enough to grab attention but bad enough to be clearly tongue-in-cheek, and instead of focusing on the one per cent (ie the top players from the world’s top teams) it is the 99 per cent, who play and love football but who will never trouble a talent scout, who get the hero treatment.

Best use of a celebrity: Adidas using the MUFC team for the fastest-selling football kit of all time

Adidas’ $750m kit partnership with Manchester United resulted in the fastest selling football strip of all time. The launch campaign for the 10-year partnership with the English Premiership club generated $2.3m in social media value for Adidas in the first three days. In comparison, Real Madrid’s Adidas kit took almost two months achieve the same figure.

More than 212m content impressions were shared on social media and the launch film accumulated more than two million views. The Manchester United social media accounts produced 38 posts relating directly to the kit launch, across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – more than any other Adidas club.

Best use of a celebrity: Donald Trump

Blunderbuss mogul Donald Trump has dominated the race for the US Republican candidacy in his first step towards the US presidency.

The straight-talking New Yorker has milked his 5.12m Twitter followers, generating free media coverage with his views – from extreme rhetoric calling for a wall across the Mexican border or a blanket ban on Muslims entering the country to his almost surreal but impassioned view of RPatz and KStew’s relationship woes.

Trump leads the GOP spread with a miniscule campaign spend of $2m. Even more impressively, not a single dime has been invested in the more traditional TV ads championed by Trump rivals.

Still, his luck must run out soon, right? Social media is just an echo chamber and the press is merely drawn to controversy, right?

Best category innovation: Thinx

Coming to our attention when its beautifully shot ads were very nearly banned from the New York subway for mentioning the word ‘periods’, Thinx is the first and only brand of period-proof underwear, with the potential to disrupt the feminine hygiene market – projected to be worth $15.2bn globally by 2017.

Instead of relying on sanitary products, the range of washable and reusable underwear employs moisture-wicking, anti-microbial, absorbent and leak-resistant technology to do the same job.

It’s not just about shaking up a category long-overdue some disruption, though. Thinx has teamed with Afripads in Uganda to fund a pack of reusable cloth pads for every underwear sold to get millions of girls back in school, and co-founder Miki Agrawal sees the brand as a vehicle to spark conversation around periods and break one of the world’s biggest taboos.

Best new product: Volvo LifePaint

Volvo’s Cannes Lions Grand Prix winning LifePaint campaign focused on safety outside the car rather than inside it. Grey London teamed up with Swedish startup Albedo 100, who made a reflective safety spray for cyclists that’s invisible in daylight but highly visible at night in the glare of headlights.

The impetus of the idea emerged when the Swedish car manufacturer stumbled across the Lapland Reindeer Herders Association in Sweden who had been using a reflective spray on the antlers of reindeer to prevent drivers crashing into them.

A collaborative effort between the two on how they could make the paint work on fabrics eventually led to the birth of LifePaint.