TONG Global is delighted to announce that we have won two Silver W3 Awards in the Social Campaigns category. The awards are in the “Travel and Tourism” subcategory for our work with Heathrow Airport, and “Contests and Promotions” for our work with Vivo.

With Heathrow’s campaign winning over Chinese consumers, and Chinese brand Vivo reaching European consumers, the two projects travelled in opposing directions but won the same recognition across both the APAC and EMEA markets.

The W3 Awards, run by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts, recognise excellence in digital creativity and honour the best of the web, from websites and campaigns to video and social. Two Silver awards across two very different sectors, with Chinese company Vivo marketing itself across Europe and Heathrow reaching Chinese consumers, are a proud moment for the whole team and a great testament to their creative and innovative work across both markets.

For Heathrow Airport, marketing agency TONG Global developed a culturally informed, emotionally led social media campaign. The campaign targeted Chinese travellers during the high-emotion festive periods of Christmas and Chinese New Year (CNY).

As airports are more than just transit points for travellers, but rather, places where home begins and ends, we built a China-focused campaign around that idea. The aim was to enhance brand preference, build cultural credibility, showcase premium customer experiences, drive social media growth, and convert cultural impact into commercial intent.

Heathrow sits at the centre of some of the most emotionally charged moments in the Chinese travel calendar. So, rather than communicate Heathrow’s services, the festive campaigns wove them into the sentimental fabric of two celebrations where these emotions run highest: Christmas and Chinese New Year.

The Christmas side of the social media campaign centred on the idea that giving is the best form of receiving. The Chinese New Year campaign, themed “Fortune in Motion” in honour of the Year of the Horse, introduced new interactive activations and generated 100% positive sentiment across influencer content on Chinese social media platforms, like Xiaohongshu (RedNote) and WeChat.

Together, the two campaigns not only delivered millions of social media impressions, but also deepened Heathrow’s cultural credibility with Chinese audiences, and demonstrated the power of emotionally led, culturally intelligent festive storytelling.

For the Chinese company Vivo, TONG developed a community-driven, social-first campaign targeting Gen Z, Millennial consumers, and photography enthusiasts across Western Europe and the wider EMEA region. As European smartphone consumers grow increasingly sceptical of conventional ads and feature specs, we built a campaign around authentic, human-centred storytelling, with the goal of building brand awareness, establishing Vivo’s credibility as a photography-focused brand, generating high-quality content at scale, and driving organic engagement across social media platforms TikTok and Instagram.

The core of the campaign centred around the Vivo Mobile Photography Competition. The initiative invited regional photography communities to tell real stories through Vivo’s camera lens, positioning the Chinese brand as one that understands the user behind the camera.

Supported by local photography institutions, TONG set visual benchmarks through platform-native UGC posts and a hero campaign video on TikTok and Instagram, using social recognition and phone rewards to incentivise top creative talent and performance.

Together, the competition activation produced hundreds of high-quality images.

The promotional campaign reached over 2.6 million views across social channels and drove nearly 80,000 engagements. The campaign delivered strong organic results, while also positioning Vivo as a credible, culturally relevant brand and successfully engaging photography communities across Europe.

As a bicultural agency with teams in London and Shanghai, we help global brands connect with Chinese audiences, and Chinese brands reach communities outside of China, through marketing strategy, content, and social.

These awards show what that approach can achieve across sectors and regions, from travel to consumer technology.