Congratulations to the Forge 2024 Torchie Awards Winners

The annual Braze Torchie Awards recognize extraordinary efforts in marketing by leaders in customer engagement. We’re delighted to share our 2024 roster of award winners, representing a spectrum of creativity and innovation in consumer communications.

Campaign of the Year: ABC News

This award recognizes a specific campaign that demonstrates strategic leadership and technical proficiency in the pursuit of stronger consumer/brand relationships.

Congratulations to ABC News for winning the 2024 Torchie Award for “Campaign of the Year.”

To help users customize election cycle information in a more streamlined experience, the ABC News team used in-app messages to generate opt-in alerts personalized to users’ preferred interests and candidates. This approach gave users the option to tailor the notifications to their needs while requiring nearly zero development work.

ABC News’ goal was two-fold: ABC News’ goal was two-fold: To maximize the amount of quality election content they could provide users while simultaneously minimizing the engineering resources required to make these changes. The design team tackled the UI challenge, delivering an interface for in-app messages and opt-ins that aligned with 2024 elections brand guidelines. Even with rigorous QA testing, the team saved nearly 800 development hours throughout the lifecycle of the feature.

Users responded to this approach: 20% of users who saw the new onboarding flow opted into one or more interest or candidate tag. From there, “Interests” generated a 6% click-through rate (CTR) and “Candidates” saw an 18% CTR. These insights will continue to inform their reporting team about which 2024 election content their users are most interested in.

Collaborative Team of the Year: Dutch Bros

This category recognizes teams who work across disciplines to collaboratively create best-in-class campaigns for their audiences using Braze.

This year, we’re excited to name Dutch Bros as our 2024 Torchie Awards “Collaborative Team of the Year.” Dutch Bros drives success with their customer engagement program through seamless teamwork across five key departments: Digital marketing, development, product, consumer insights, and creative. Dutch Bros recently relocated its primary headquarters from Oregon to Arizona and expanded its team to include new members specializing in app development, martech, and loyalty programs. By bringing the development of their app in-house, they assembled a dedicated team of developers, marketers, product managers, and consumer insights experts to revamp the app and introduce new features requested by customers.

The newly-formed teams at Dutch Bros worked hand in hand to build a simplified, unified customer experience. Developers and product managers collaborated closely with marketers to ensure the app's functionality aligned with campaign strategies, while consumer analytics and finance experts provided critical insights to balance budgetary constraints. This cohesive effort resulted in an app that both meets and exceeds customer expectations, and integrates seamlessly with broader engagement initiatives. By leveraging Braze, Dutch Bros created personalized and gamified messages that resonate with customers. The successful launch and positive customer feedback underscores the effectiveness of their collaborative approach, setting a new standard for customer interaction and satisfaction.

Creative Excellence: Mint Mobile

This award recognizes a team that harnessed the Braze customer engagement platform to deliver original, innovative customer messaging experiences.

Talk about a partnership that’s “mint” to be! We’re pleased to name Mint Mobile as our 2024 “Creative Excellence Award” winner for their “Mint Mobile Shake” collaboration with Jack in the Box.

The Mint Mobile Shake was created just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, bringing together joyful, stand-out messaging across in-store signage, TV commercials featuring the Jack in the Box mascot and Ryan Reynolds, social media, and an email campaign. The email campaign highlighted a dynamic promo code that honored a free Mint Mobile Shake to each Mint subscriber through the Jack in the Box app.

The campaign creative spotlighted the collaboration with bright, branded imagery while focusing on a seamless redemption flow. The Braze platform’s promo code feature allowed the team to import all the unique promo codes needed for the campaign, insert the liquid snippet into their one-time email send, and automatically populate a coupon code for each user. With this campaign, Mint Mobile continued to push the envelope on messaging in the mobile industry and created a “momint” that was deliciously rewarding.

Marketing Leader of the Year: Kanchan Lad, Papa Johns UK

This award recognizes a marketing executive or executives who manage a team that builds innovative, personalized, customer-centric campaigns in Braze.

This year, we’re proud to present Kanchan Lad, Senior Product Manager of MarTech & Loyalty for Papa Johns UK, with our 2024 Torchie Awards “Marketing Leader of the Year” award. Kanchan championed the integration of Braze to address the limitations of Papa Johns’ existing CRM system, creating a “Local Marketing Hub” to empower franchisees of over 400+ Papa Johns stores. Kanchan’s dedication to training and education for her teams led directly to an increase in customer retention, yielding a year-over-year uplift in revenue by over 260% and setting a new standard for customer-centric communication in the QSR industry.

Rising Marketing Star: Casandra Lima, RappiCard

This award recognizes an exceptional new user of the Braze platform whose work leverages technology in thoughtful, effective ways to support better user relationships and stronger business outcomes.

We’re pleased to recognize Casandra Lima, lifecycle manager at RappiCard, as our 2024 “Rising Marketing Star of the Year” for her remarkable strategic leadership and outstanding contributions to the development of RappiCard’s brand relationships.

One of Casandra’s biggest accomplishments this year includes breaking every record set for the competitive credit card market in Mexico, achieving a 105% increase in registered customers through the “Hot Sale Jackpot” campaign. Casandra owned and developed a number of campaigns for RappiCard that spoke to uniquely local traditions, building brand loyalty and maximizing consumer impact through in-app messaging and dynamic events.

Bonfire Community Leader: David O’Reilly, Microsoft Clipchamp

This award recognizes a veteran Braze Bonfire community member who is both an active participant and stands out for helping fellow Braze users.

We’re honored to award David O’Reilly, lifecycle marketing manager with Microsoft Clipchamp and long-time Braze power user, with our 2024 “Bonfire Community Leader” award. David’s commitment to the Bonfire community over the last year was unparalleled. He consistently chimes in to answer questions (at least twice per week!), and fellow marketers know him as a go-to source for creative inspiration. With nearly 150 posts and 285 sign-ins this year, there’s no doubt that David has made an enormous impact.

Braze for Social Impact: ShareTheMeal

This category recognizes a team using Braze technology to create positive change and material impact within their respective communities. In addition to being recognized, the winner of this award will direct a $10,000 grant to a charity of their recommendation, funded by the Braze for Social Impact Fund at Tides Foundation.

We’re proud to recognize ShareTheMeal as the winner of our “Braze for Social Impact” 2024 Torchie Award. ShareTheMeal is a fundraising app that partners with the United Nations World Food Programme. ShareTheMeal used the Braze platform’s capabilities to recognize individual donors as “Field Heroes” and to raise further funds to combat hunger. Together, this partnership has generated over $5 million to fight against food scarcity, a clear gift to communities worldwide. ShareTheMeal has directed their $10,000 grant toward World Food Program USA, allowing them to further expand their reach and continue their vital work in the fight against global hunger.

Partner Campaign of the Year: Stitch for e.l.f. Cosmetics

This category recognizes partners who delight their customers through a unique campaign and strategy built with Braze capabilities.

Stitch’s creativity and prowess sets their campaigns apart, and we’re honored to award their team with the 2024 Torchie Awards “Partner Campaign of the Year” for their hard work. Stitch holds over 175 Braze certifications across their team of 80, leading to a world-class application of Braze capabilities. Nowhere is this success so visible than e.l.f. Cosmetics’ Beauty Squad loyalty program, boasting over 4.5 million members. Stitch engaged first-party data collection for the Beauty Squad program, spanning basic demographics to specific user product preferences, skin type, and reward redemption habits. Now, these details power individualized moments like birthday messages and rewards—all part of a journey that makes e.l.f. Cosmetics fans feel seen and cherished.

Service Partner of the Year: VML

This award celebrates a service partner who significantly advanced their Braze practice through comprehensive training and innovation to markedly improve business outcomes.

As our most accredited services partner globally, boasting over 200 specialist certifications, there’s no question that VML is setting the standard for Braze usage and knowledge. That’s why we’re pleased to name VML the 2024 Torchie Awards “Service Partner of the Year.”

VML’s team resides all over the globe—in Denmark, Mexico, Netherlands, Singapore, Thailand, the UK, and the US—which makes them uniquely capable of providing global and regional solutions to the brands they serve. Some examples of their success this year include increasing time-to-value timelines for Wendy’s by 55% and driving a 10X efficiency gain for Klarna after simplifying their complex communication ecosystem of over 100+ journey paths. We look forward to seeing VML thrive in their latest collaboration with Costa, the world’s second-largest coffee brand and one of the largest loyalty programs in the UK.

Technology Partner of the Year: AWS

This category recognizes a Braze Alloys technology partner who enables brands to deliver exceptional experiences to their users.

Congratulations to AWS, our 2024 Torchie Awards “Technology Partner of the Year.” For over a decade, our partnership with AWS has provided the robust cloud infrastructure that powers key components of the Braze platform, enabling us to deliver seamless and reliable experiences to customers worldwide. Our native integrations with AWS, including Braze Currents, Amazon Personalize, and Cloud Data Ingestion, are utilized by hundreds of customers to enhance data-driven insights and save valuable engineering time. Together, AWS and Braze offer innovative solutions via AWS Marketplace that help customers hit their cloud commitments with AWS and achieve superior business outcomes.

Transformation Partner of the Year: CACI for easyJet

This category recognizes a Braze partner who demonstrated excellence to drive a transformative change for one of their customers.

This year, we recognize CACI as our Torchie Awards 2024 “Transformation Partner of the Year” for their powerful reimagination of easyJet’s communications framework through Braze. To meet their client’s goal of becoming Europe’s most beloved airline, CACI streamlined easyJet’s communication infrastructure by pivoting to Braze as the chosen solution for a cohesive messaging platform. The transfer took place in record time—only four months—and met 100% success for IP Warming in all domains and markets. This transformation was key to improving operational efficiency and enhancing the easyJet customer journey.

Congratulations to all of our 2024 nominees and winners, and thank you to everyone who attended this year’s Forge.