Congratulations to the Forge 2025 Torchie Awards Winners
Published on September 30, 2025/Last edited on September 30, 2025/12 min read
Published on September 30, 2025/Last edited on September 30, 2025/12 min read
The annual Braze Torchie Awards recognize extraordinary efforts in marketing by leaders in customer engagement. We’re delighted to share our 2025 roster of award winners, representing a spectrum of creativity and innovation in consumer communications. For the full information on all of our wonderful finalists, visit here.
This award recognizes a specific campaign that demonstrates strategic leadership and technical proficiency in the pursuit of stronger consumer/brand relationships.
Congratulations to Wendy's for clinching the 2025 Torchie Award for “Campaign of the Year” with their fantastic "Fresh Picks" campaign.
Amidst the frenzy of March Madness, Wendy's turned the challenge of capturing sports fans' attention into an opportunity to deepen loyalty and drive digital engagement. By harnessing the Braze in-app messaging and webhook functionality, they seamlessly integrated with their loyalty platform, Punchh, to reward fans for their tournament predictions.
The "Fresh Picks" campaign was a dazzling display of multi-channel activation, using the Braze orchestration capabilities to send targeted SMS, push notifications, and personalized emails, keeping fans engaged and excited. The integration with their loyalty platform allowed Wendy's to reward loyal customers with exclusive offers, boosting engagement and retention.
The results were phenomenal: over 10 million in-app impressions, over 550,000 new digital accounts, and 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—and that is certainly worthy of celebration.
This category recognizes teams who work across disciplines to collaboratively create best-in-class campaigns for their audiences using Braze.
We are delighted to announce REA Group as the recipient of the 2025 Torchie Award for “Collaborative Team of the Year.”
The cross-functional team at REA Group, comprising 50 individuals across four strategic business units, worked tirelessly to integrate systems, unify customer data records, and establish a shared vision. This monumental effort resulted in a remarkable 26% year-over-year increase in monthly active members for the Ignite self-service tool and a 20% increase in high-value actions—all achieved by fostering a culture of shared learning and efficiency.
REA Group’s collaborative spirit and innovative approach have not only built a strong technical foundation but also fostered a culture of shared learning and efficiency, pioneering the use of Braze for B2B engagement and making them highly deserving of this prestigious award.
This award recognizes a team that harnessed the Braze customer engagement platform to deliver original, innovative customer messaging experiences.
Join us in celebrating a partnership that stands out from the rest! We are pleased to recognize ClassPass as the recipient of our 2024 “Innovative Campaign Excellence Award” for their remarkable "Best of ClassPass" campaign.
What began as a simple idea to honor their partners evolved into a globally scaled, multi-channel creative masterpiece. Just in time for the new year, ClassPass delivered an exhilarating and authentic experience that spanned in-app modals for voting, push notifications, emails, and a custom microsite to announce the winners. This campaign was a testament to creativity and technology working in harmony, driving a 120% increase in in-app voting participation year-over-year and surpassing all engagement benchmarks.
The campaign's brilliance shone through with Braze Canvas, which mapped a dynamic user journey, and Smartling integration that personalized content across five languages. ClassPass crafted a seamless, personalized experience that felt connected, relevant, and on-brand across every channel and region. With over 800,000 users engaged in a coordinated, cross-channel journey, the campaign set new standards for audience engagement and brand sentiment.
This accolade honors a brand that leverages AI capabilities within the Braze customer engagement platform to captivate and connect with their customers at scale.
This year, we are introducing a brand-new “AI in Action” category to celebrate the transformative power of artificial intelligence in enhancing the marketer and consumer experience. This award highlights the pivotal role AI plays in crafting personalized, seamless interactions that resonate with consumers on a deeper level.
Yum! Brands’ award-winning AI success stems from a smart, disciplined strategy. By first building a strong data foundation and securing full executive support, they could rapidly deploy AI to personalize the customer experience across all channels.
Congratulations to the entire Yum! Brands team for their achievements in AI-driven innovation and leading the way towards a brighter, more connected future!
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 thrilled to present Pedro Solís Cámara, Head of Growth at RappiCard Mexico, with our 2025 Torchie Award for “Marketing Leader of the Year.” Pedro crafted and executed a unified vision that seamlessly integrated growth, engagement, and financial performance, transforming marketing into a core business driver. Under his dynamic leadership, RappiCard achieved a remarkable 40% growth in total portfolio value and a 70% improvement in retention, showcasing his strategic brilliance and operational excellence.
Pedro’s innovative use of Braze as a strategic enabler has powered personalized, automated, and intelligently orchestrated journeys, scaling across millions of users and embedding Braze deeply into RappiCard’s customer activation, retention, and re-engagement strategies. His leadership is characterized by strategic clarity and a deep commitment to empowering his team, fostering a culture of rapid experimentation and cross-functional collaboration. Pedro’s visionary approach and relentless pursuit of customer-centric growth underline exactly why he is Marketing Leader of the Year.
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 excited to celebrate Lindsey Spillman, Sr Specialist, CRM at Wendy's, as our 2025 “Rising Marketing Star of the Year” for her extraordinary strategic vision and exceptional contributions to revolutionizing Wendy's CRM program.
In just over a year, Lindsey has skyrocketed the company's CRM initiatives from 15 campaigns per month to over 50 unique touchpoints. She has masterfully taken charge of the strategy and execution, spearheading a loyalty squad dedicated to maximizing customer engagement through Braze. Among her standout achievements are the creation of the highly personalized "Nugg Buddy" campaign and the interactive "Krabby Patty Word Scramble" game, which have collectively driven a remarkable 66% increase in loyalty sales year-over-year.
Lindsey is celebrated for her unique blend of creativity, strategic insight, and technical prowess, making her a true star in the marketing world.
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 celebrate Allan Heo, Founder & CEO at For Now Marketing, as our 2025 winner for the “Bonfire Community Leader of the Year” Torchie award. Allan’s unwavering dedication to the Braze community over the past five years has been nothing short of transformative. As a Badge Leader, Discussion Leader, and Solutions Leader, Allan is a beacon of knowledge and inspiration, consistently engaging with the Bonfire Community to share his unique insights and educational resources.
His prolific presence on the discussion boards, combined with his Braze expertise and 15 (that’s right, 15) certifications, make him an invaluable asset to the community. Allan’s passion for giving back and fostering growth among Braze marketers is truly commendable, and we celebrate his remarkable impact and leadership. This recognition is a testament to his hard work and dedication—let's go, Allan! Your journey has been inspiring, and this accolade is a well-deserved milestone in your incredible journey with Braze.
This category recognizes a team using Braze technology to devise a solution for a social impact challenge, making a positive impact on the world at large. The winner of this award will direct a $10,000 grant to the charity of their recommendation, funded by our Braze for Social Impact Fund.
We’re proud to announce iFood as the winner of our “Braze for Social Impact” 2025 Torchie Award. iFood harnessed the power of Braze to engage over 370,000 delivery drivers in two groundbreaking social impact initiatives, resulting in over one million course completions that helps close the . Through the "My High School Diploma" program, iFood leveraged the Braze multi-channel capabilities to achieve an impressive 97% of its enrollment goal. Meanwhile, the "Decola" online course platform successfully reached 82% of its active driver base.
Braze played a pivotal role in delivering strategic, segmented, and automated communications, allowing the iFood team to save valuable time and focus on analyzing impactful results. iFood helped thousands of drivers earn diplomas, boost income, and change the trajectory of their futures. This collaboration has not only empowered iFood's driver community but has also showcased the transformative potential of technology in education and community engagement.
iFood will direct their $10,000 grant from the Braze for Social Impact Fund to help expand access to digital learning and ed tech in Brazil’s public education system, strengthening opportunities for Brazilian teachers, students, and administrators.
This category recognizes partners who delight their customers through a unique campaign and strategy built with Braze capabilities.
Congratulations to Publicis for winning the 2025 Torchie Award for “Partner Campaign of the Year,” recognizing the part they played in the groundbreaking weather-triggered McDelivery campaign.
In a pioneering effort, McDonald’s and Publicis harnessed the power of Braze and AccuWeather to create a campaign that dynamically responded to local, real-time weather conditions. By uniquely defining “unseasonable” and “inclement” weather for each zip code, they ensured that their messaging was hyper-relevant, prompting McDelivery orders precisely when the weather made staying in most appealing.
This campaign was a marvel of technological integration, utilizing Braze Connected Content, Content Blocks, and Catalogs to streamline processes and minimize API calls. Over a two-month period, the campaign delivered an astounding 79.6 million messages to 28.2 million users, driving an impressive $312K in incremental spend and achieving a 63x ROI. The initiative also saw a +0.67% increase in transactions and spend, along with a +0.05pp rise in order rate.
This innovative approach is now being considered for global implementation, marking a significant leap forward in personalized, weather-based marketing for McDonald’s. Nice work!
This award celebrates a service partner who significantly advanced their Braze practice through comprehensive training and innovation to markedly improve business outcomes.
We are elated to announce Merkle as the 2025 Torchie Award winner for “Service Partner of the Year,” celebrating their remarkable achievements and strategic collaboration with Braze.
Merkle has made a significant impact across various sectors, including retail, QSR, telecom, and financial services, with impressive client wins such as DSW, Dairy Queen, Denny’s, US Cellular, and SkyShowtime. Their innovative strategies have led to outstanding outcomes such as a 42% increase in monthly app sessions for US Cellular.
Globally, Merkle has expanded its footprint, adding new logos in the UK, Norway, Sweden, and Japan. With over 221 Braze certifications, a dedicated EMEA Center of Excellence, and a scalable global delivery model, Merkle is poised to drive Braze adoption and innovation to new heights. Their initiatives include partner-led onboarding, integrated CRM solutions, and the development of joint accelerators like Merkury + Braze and an upcoming Shopify solution.
Merkle’s thought leadership and consistent presence at Braze events underscore their strategic alignment and unwavering commitment to excellence. We look forward to witnessing Merkle's continued success and innovation in the coming years!
This category recognizes a Braze Alloys technology partner who enables brands to deliver exceptional experiences to their users.
Congratulations to AWS for winning the Torchie Award for “Technology Partner of the Year” for the second consecutive year! This accolade celebrates AWS's transformative partnership with Braze, marked by groundbreaking technical integration and strategic collaboration.
AWS has been instrumental in launching the Customer Data Integration (CDI) and native integrations with Amazon Personalize and Bedrock AI, significantly enhancing customer engagement capabilities. Their innovative efforts led to a remarkable 40% reduction in procurement time through the AWS Marketplace, showcasing their commitment to efficiency and excellence.
In a testament to their impact, AWS played a pivotal role in Braze's expansion into new verticals, achieving an impressive 30% year-over-year growth in joint customer acquisitions. This partnership exemplifies the power of collaboration and innovation, and together, AWS and Braze continue to deliver cutting-edge solutions that drive superior business outcomes.
This category recognizes a Braze partner who demonstrated excellence to drive a transformative change for one of their customers.
This year, we recognize Stitch for winning the Torchie Award for “Transformation Partner of the Year” for their collaboration with Taco Bell.
Faced with the daunting task of ensuring quality assurance at scale, Taco Bell and Stitch tackled the challenge head-on. With over 9 million messages sent daily through Braze, Taco Bell's lean team was burdened by a manual, time-consuming QA process susceptible to human error. In a brilliant move, Stitch developed a custom automated QA system utilizing Braze’s Canvas API, Liquid, and Connected Content. This innovative solution detected issues such as broken links, UTM errors, and formatting problems, delivering findings directly to stakeholders via email.
The result? A dramatic transformation from hours of manual QA to a proactive, scalable solution that significantly boosted launch confidence, campaign accuracy, and downstream analytics. Taco Bell's partnership with Stitch exemplifies how automation can revolutionize operational efficiency—-some seriously smart work!
Congratulations to all of our 2025 nominees and winners, and thank you to everyone who attended this year’s Forge.
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