Brilliance Awards Winners 2018

In 2018, we issued six honorary Brilliance Awards in recognition of incredible innovation, success and performance to organizations and leaders in Canada, South Korea, Ireland and USA.

Awarded to Loblaw Companies, Canada

In 2018, Canada’s largest food and pharmacy retailer completed a significant multi-year digital overhaul. They successfully linked their legacy infrastructure with the launch of “PC Express” (an online grocery pickup service) and unified their loyalty program into the completely digital PC Optimum app, which onboarded millions of Canadians in its first year alone.

In 2018, Kakao turned its ubiquitous chat app, KakaoTalk, into a digital and financial powerhouse. Through the explosive growth of Kakao Bank from it’s launch in late 2017 to 6-million users in 2018, they proved how a digital and tech ecosystem can rapidly dominate a nation’s consumer banking sector.

Awarded to SoapBox Labs, Ireland

Founded by Dr. Patricia Scanlon in Dublin, this pioneering speech-recognition startup achieved massive global milestones in 2018. They built a world-first proprietary AI voice engine designed specifically for children’s unique speech patterns and accents, securing critical global partnerships in the education and gaming tech industries.

Awarded to Nike, USA

Nike’s ‘Just Do It: Dream Crazy’ campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick in late 2018 was a structural triumph of data-driven, viral digital marketing. By intentionally utilizing social media polarization, Nike drove a 31% spike in online sales and dominated global digital media discourse for weeks, proving the massive power of values-based digital targeting.

Awarded to Big Hit Entertainment, South Korea

In 2018, the team behind the K-pop phenomenon BTS rewrote the global rulebook for digital creative engagement. Through a highly strategic ecosystem of interactive transmedia, V Live streams, customized fan apps, and decentralized web campaigns, they bypassed traditional western music gatekeepers to top the US Billboard 200 chart completely on the strength of a digitally mobilized global fanbase.

Awarded to OpenAI, USA

June 2018 marked a quiet but foundational moment in human technological history when OpenAI published its seminal paper introducing GPT-1 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer). This original framework proved that generative AI could learn to predict human text organically from vast datasets, quietly laying down the direct architectural blueprint for the modern AI revolution.