2025 Torchie Awards: Our Final Categories + The People's Choice

We’re in the final days before Forge and the countdown to the Torchie Awards is on! For this post, we dive into three of categories that always see the most entries: Collaborative Team of the Year, Creative Excellence, and Campaign of the Year. The submissions for 2025 were next level, and because of that we’re introducing something new this year: The People’s Choice Award for two of our award categories, Creative Excellence and Campaign of the Year. More on that in a moment, but first, check out the accomplishments of our nominees for Collaborative Team of the Year.

Collaborative Team of the Year

This award celebrates teams that have successfully worked across different departments and disciplines to create best-in-class campaigns. 

Crunchyroll
A global, cross-functional team of 13 worked together to create a deeply personalized messaging experience for over 12 million members, resulting in over 3 million unique impressions.

HBO Max
Max Rewind 2024 was a globally executed, end-of-year personalized recap campaign that felt like a "Spotify Wrapped" for Max subscribers. A cross-functional team delivered this best-in-class, interactive experience, with CRM Ops leading the technical innovation by building it entirely in Braze despite lacking native tooling. This resulted in a stunning success, with a well-above average participation rate in the US and major press coverage.

Jump
This fully remote cross-functional team leveraged Braze to build a proprietary platform that delivers highly personalized, real-time fan experiences for clients, resulting in smarter campaigns and stronger fan connections.

REA Group
REA Group’s cross-functional team collaborated to expand their Braze expertise from B2C to B2B, resulting in record monthly active members in their B2B Customer app “Ignite” and a strong personalization stack, ready to accelerate even further.

Sephora
Sephora partnered across six different teams to tackle a critical Braze reimplementation, reducing their custom events from over 20,000 to a manageable 30, which led to a 549% year-over-year increase in revenue from a key campaign.

SoFi
A small, ambitious group at SoFi collaborated to create the "Money Moves" campaign, a highly personalized email that provided members with an insightful review of their financial progress, creating a blueprint for future data-driven campaigns.

Your Vote Matters: Let’s talk about the People's Choice Awards

Make your voice heard this year at Forge! For the first time ever, the community will decide on an additional winner for the People's Choice Award in two of our top categories: Campaign of the Year and Creative Excellence (hint: the ones you just read about!).

During Forge, from September 29-September 30, you’ll be able to cast a vote for your favorite, whether you’re attending Forge in Las Vegas or attending Forge Digital, and determine who takes home the Torchie. Your vote will honor the teams and campaigns that have truly set a new standard for customer engagement. The winners People’s Choice for Creative Excellence and the People’s Choice for Campaign of the Year will be announced on the final day of Forge. Let’s learn about the finalists!

Creative Excellence

This award honors teams that use the Braze platform to create innovative, original messaging and unique customer experiences. In addition to the Torchie Award from Braze, this category is also eligible for the People’s Choice Award.

ClassPass: Best of ClassPass
ClassPass's "Best of ClassPass" campaign evolved from a simple idea to a globally scaled, multi-channel creative experience. Using Braze's Canvas, the team mapped a dynamic user journey that included in-app modals for voting, push notifications, emails, and a custom microsite for announcing winners. The campaign saw a 120% increase in in-app voting participation year-over-year and surpassed engagement benchmarks. Braze's features, like Smartling integration and dynamic variables, were key to personalizing content across five languages, proving that creativity and technology can drive authentic connection.

HBO Max: Pre-finale IAMs
HBO Max's "Pre-finale Voting IAMs" campaign transformed in-app messaging into an interactive, story-driven experience. The team used Braze's Multi-Page IAMs to invite users to predict outcomes for popular shows like House of the Dragon and The White Lotus, then instantly recommend new content based on their choices. This agility, enabled by Braze, allowed the CRM team to own the creative process end-to-end without relying on engineering resources. The campaign saw a significant lift in viewership for featured titles and proved that interactivity can build deeper user investment and loyalty.

McDonald's: Unbagged
For its "Unbagged" campaign, McDonald's used Braze to turn owned channels into a leading creative force. The campaign, which was a personalized, data-driven "tarot card" reading based on each customer's ordering behavior, was executed through 29 million individualized email and push notification experiences. Using Braze's advanced segmentation and dynamic content, McDonald's crafted over 700 unique story variations. The campaign went beyond metrics, strengthening fandom and emotional loyalty, and set a new standard for what CRM can achieve as a creative and cultural driver.

RappiCard: Rosca
RappiCard's "Rosca" campaign creatively leveraged a traditional Mexican ritual to drive in-app engagement. Using a custom HTML in-app message built in Braze, users could "cut" a digital Rosca to reveal a randomized, real-time reward. Braze powered the entire end-to-end experience, from handling random prize logic with JavaScript to using webhooks to assign rewards instantly. This approach pushed beyond traditional campaigns by creating a joyful, interactive ritual that increased the likelihood of promotion usage and fostered a deeper emotional connection with users.

SoFi: Money Moves
SoFi's "Money Moves" campaign was a highly personalized email that provided members with a financial "receipt" of their progress. The idea was to use Braze to showcase aggregated, sensitive data in a transparent and engaging way. The campaign used 31 novel custom attributes and 149 lines of Liquid logic to create a unique receipt for each member. The success of this campaign, which included the use of a third-party partner to add gamified "badges," proved that Braze's personalization tools can build trust and confidence with members, leading to a highly-regarded and impactful marketing message.

Campaign of the Year

This award recognizes campaigns that show strategic leadership and technical skill to build stronger relationships with customers. In addition to the Torchie Award from Braze, this category is also eligible for the People’s Choice Award.

HBO Max: Paris Summer Olympics
For the Paris Summer Olympics, the HBO Max EMEA team faced the challenge of delivering over 2,000 real-time communications to 13 markets. They solved this with Braze by building an automated messaging engine using API-triggered Canvas Flows, Connected Content, and Liquid logic. This innovation, including AI automation for key moment alerts, saved over 1,300 hours of manual work and resulted in a high streaming rate of Olympic content, well above the benchmark. The campaign demonstrated a repeatable framework for future live events and significantly boosted engagement.

Ibotta: Project Egg
Ibotta's "Cheap Eggs Program" was a rapid, four-week campaign launched in response to rising egg prices. Using Braze, the team quickly deployed a universal offer via Content Cards and Push Notifications, reaching a wide audience and driving strong performance. The campaign generated 643 million impressions and led to 319,000 offer redemptions, with 85% of egg offer redeemers also engaging with other content. This agile, data-driven approach not only delivered a significant lift in business metrics but also generated strong earned media coverage and strengthened user trust.

RappiCard: Legacy
RappiCard's "Legacy" campaign was a gamified experience built with Braze to drive sustained user engagement and financial activity. The campaign used custom HTML in-app messages to create an interactive "level-up" journey where users completed goals to evolve an axolotl avatar and unlock rewards. This strategy, fully orchestrated with Braze Canvas and webhooks, led to significant behavioral uplifts, including a 337% increase in utility bill purchases and a 45% increase in physical card purchases. The campaign was fully automated, required no engineering resources, and established a new growth layer for the company.

SoFi: Invest Milestones
SoFi's "Invest Milestones" program was designed to engage members beyond onboarding by celebrating their financial progress in real time. The evergreen program, built with Braze, delivers behavior-based messaging triggered by actions like placing a first trade or reaching a portfolio value threshold. This personalized approach has driven over $60 million in net new deposits and achieved a deposit rate nearly four times higher than the benchmark. The program created a scalable framework that allows the marketing team to launch new moments quickly, reducing manual work and driving long-term financial growth for both members and the business.

Wendy's: Fresh Picks - March Madness
Wendy's "Fresh Picks" campaign leveraged Braze to create an interactive March Madness experience, allowing customers to make tournament predictions. Using Braze's in-app messaging and webhook functionality, they seamlessly integrated with their loyalty platform to award points for correct picks. This multi-channel approach drove over 10 million in-app impressions, attracting over 550,000 new digital accounts and resulting in 1.12 million national offer redemptions. The campaign streamlined operations and delivered significant business impact by turning a passive event into an active, rewarding experience.

Good luck to all our finalists–see you at Forge! 

Join us at Forge to celebrate all the finalists, learn from the best in the industry, and cast your vote for the People's Choice Award. If you can’t meet us in Las Vegas, join us for Forge Digital! Whether you're a long-time member of the community or just getting started, Forge is where you’ll gain the insight, inspiration, and support to stand out by using your creativity in new ways. See you soon!