When the ballroom lights rose at Golf Course Hotel Kampala during the 2025 Silverback Awards, one agency dominated the stage, the conversation, and eventually the headlines. MAAD McCann, already regarded as one of Uganda’s most versatile creative powerhouses, delivered a sweeping performance that placed it unmistakably at the pinnacle of the region’s advertising and marketing industry. The agency walked away with the prestigious Agency of the Year title, major category wins, key craft recognitions, and individual honours that underscored both its internal talent and its formidable approach to creative problem-solving.
But behind the public celebration lies a deeper story—one powered by strategic thinking, relentless collaboration, cultural sensitivity, and a creative philosophy that places people, insight, and integrity at the centre of every brief. This feature brings together the official award announcement and the reflections of individual winners—Creative Director of the Year Peter Kazibwe, Art Director of the Year Denis Kajura, Copywriter of the Year Robert Kizito, and the broader insights from the agency itself—to show why MAAD McCann’s triumph was not accidental, but earned through years of disciplined growth and intentional creativity.
An Awards Night That Defined an Agency’s Trajectory
The 2025 Silverback Awards marked a turning point for the East African creative ecosystem, with a record number of entries and increasingly competitive standards. Yet in a field crowded with outstanding contenders, MAAD McCann rose with unmistakable distinction.
The agency claimed multiple Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Craft honours, a reflection of its depth across formats—digital, radio, film, integrated campaigns, design, social impact, and data-driven marketing. Its flagship client, GOtv, was crowned Brand of the Year, highlighting a long-standing partnership rooted in trust, bold thinking, and unified vision. Campaigns such as Your BFF – Best Football Friend and the Ka Weekie Integrated Campaign captured the judges’ attention for their clarity, cultural relevance, precision, and ability to connect authentically with audiences.
Tusker Lite’s Mt. Rwenzori Marathon Kit Design emerged as another standout victory, celebrated for visually translating identity, community, and pride into wearable storytelling. Meanwhile, UNICEF’s Why Gamble? radio campaign demonstrated MAAD’s range—proving the agency can be as playful and entertaining as it is socially conscious, ethical, and responsible in its communication.
What made these achievements especially meaningful is the consistency in thinking behind them. MAAD McCann’s multi-disciplinary success showed not only its ability to execute high-quality work, but also its mastery of insight, strategy, and cultural fluency—qualities that judges described as increasingly essential in an age where brands face heightened expectations around responsibility, sustainability, and audience understanding.
A Philosophy Anchored in Insight and Ethical Creativity
According to MAAD McCann’s Co-Founder and Managing Director, Adris Kamuli, the victory was the result of deliberate alignment: insight-driven thinking, cultural understanding, strategic discipline, and ethical grounding. The agency’s culture—summarised in the well-known MAAD FACTOR (Flexibility, Accountability, Coherence, Teamwork, and Originality)—forms the framework through which every brief is interpreted and every idea is built.
This approach is particularly evident in the agency’s commitment to coherence. Every department—Creative, Digital, PR, Media, Production, Strategy, Operations, and Social Behaviour Change—contributes collectively, ensuring that campaigns feel unified and complete. Ideas are debated, reshaped, and refined through a collaborative rhythm that has become part of the agency’s DNA.
The 2025 awards theme, “Elevating the Grind,” resonated deeply within MAAD’s walls. To them, it mirrored the realities of the work: the long hours, the countless revisions, the internal debates over direction and detail, and the unwavering pursuit of solutions that not only look good but work. It is this grind—elevated by purpose, empathy, and curiosity—that makes the agency’s output resonant and effective.
Leadership in Motion: The Vision of Creative Director of the Year, Peter Kazibwe
Of all the individual honours MAAD received, the recognition of Creative Director of the Year for Peter Kazibwe served as a symbolic moment. For Peter, however, the accolade is less about personal achievement and more about the collective engine behind the agency’s success.
“Great ideas do not happen in isolation,” he says. “They happen when you align strategy with cultural understanding, when you respect the brief, and when you allow creativity the room to stretch and surprise you.”
His leadership shone across the winning campaigns for GOtv, Tusker Lite, and UNICEF. He credits the seamless collaboration between departments—Digital refining experiences, Production elevating execution, Strategy grounding each direction, and Creative integrating everything into one coherent expression.
One of the most rewarding aspects of Peter’s journey has been mentorship. Seeing young creatives sharpen their instincts, challenge norms, and discover their artistic identity has been, in his words, “a joy I never anticipated would mean so much.” For him, originality is not a spontaneous phenomenon; it is nurtured, shaped, and encouraged. This approach reflects a broader shift in African creative leadership—towards mentorship-centred, people-first management that builds ecosystems rather than hierarchies.
The Art Director’s Masterstroke: Denis Kajura’s Visual Storytelling
For Art Director of the Year, Denis Kajura, receiving the award was “a meaningful brush stroke of validation,” affirming both his craft and the collective brilliance of the MAAD McCann creative team. Denis sees art direction as far more than aesthetics. It is the discipline of storytelling through visual strategy.
“Design must look good, yes, but it must also think,” he says. Every element—colour, layout, composition, motion—is intentional. His work on GOtv’s Your BFF, the Ka Weekie integrated campaign, and the Tusker Lite Mt. Rwenzori Marathon kit exemplified the seamless blend of creativity and discipline that guided MAAD’s wins.
Denis also emphasises mentorship as core to his philosophy. He believes that when young designers grow, the work grows with them—a principle he considers “the MAAD way.” The theme Elevating the Grind resonated strongly with him, mirroring the unseen labour behind each project: the late-night tweaks, the reworking, the endless search for clarity and coherence.
For Denis, the award is not simply recognition. It is a reassurance to clients that their campaigns sit in careful, steady, and strategically aligned hands.
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If visuals shape the audience’s eye, words shape their emotion—and in Copywriter of the Year Robert Kizito, MAAD McCann has a storyteller with rare ability. For Robert, the award felt surreal, but also validating of the culture and collaborative spirit around him.
“This award is a nod to the incredible team at MAAD McCann,” he says. “Our spellbinding ideas and the kind of campaigns that make clients lean back and say, ‘Now this is what excellence looks like.’”
His work on GOtv’s Your BFF and UNICEF’s Why Gamble? campaigns demonstrated his understanding that writing is not just about crafting lines. It is about understanding people, culture, behaviour, and context. GOtv’s campaign worked because “the words, the visuals, and the strategy behaved like a well-trained creative orchestra.” UNICEF’s work required creativity to “sit responsibly next to impact,” demanding clarity, restraint, and emotional intelligence.
Robert celebrates the MAAD environment where collaboration is “the office anthem.” Brainstorms, feedback sessions, and late-night idea hunts form the backbone of MAAD’s ideation culture.
The theme Elevating the Grind resonated strongly with him: “Every day is about pushing harder, thinking smarter, and supporting each other through the creative roller coaster.” Being named Copywriter of the Year reaffirmed for him why he writes—to tell stories that matter, shift conversations, and elevate human connection.
Why MAAD McCann Stands Out
To understand why MAAD McCann towered above the competition at the 2025 Silverback Awards, one must move beyond the trophies and examine the agency’s inner engine—the philosophy, the culture, and the human stories that fuel its creativity. From the collective reflections of the winning team, several defining truths emerge, each offering a window into the discipline, imagination, and conviction that shape MAAD’s work.
At MAAD McCann, insight is the first act of creation. Every brief begins with a question, a cultural nuance, a behavioural observation, or a human truth. This is where the agency’s campaigns draw their power. As Copywriter of the Year Robert Kizito puts it, “Writing is about understanding people, culture, and brands. That is the prism of possibilities where the rubber meets the road.” His winning campaigns were not accidents of clever phrasing—they were the product of listening, watching, and interpreting the world with intention. In campaigns like GOtv’s Your BFF and UNICEF’s Why Gamble?, the ideas lingered because they were rooted in how audiences live, speak, think, and feel. “Originality mixed with relevance and strategy produces campaigns that don’t just land—they linger,” Robert says. That lingering effect is the MAAD signature.
Just as essential to the agency’s ethos is a fierce commitment to collaboration—not the theoretical kind, but a lived practice embedded in every project. “Great ideas do not happen in isolation,” says Creative Director of the Year Peter Kazibwe, whose leadership steered several of this year’s top campaigns. “They happen when you align strategy with cultural understanding, when you respect the brief, and when you allow creativity the room to stretch a little and surprise you.” His description of MAAD’s creative process is almost orchestral: Digital refining the experience, Production bringing ideas to life, Strategy setting the compass, and Creative stitching everything together. This ensemble mentality ensures that MAAD’s campaigns feel coherent, layered, and complete. It is collaboration as craft.
Equally central to MAAD’s identity is its ethical compass. The agency’s success is not merely measured through aesthetics or applause, but through the responsibility it attaches to its messaging. UNICEF’s Why Gamble? campaign stands as a testament to this. Robert describes it as a moment where “creativity had to sit respectfully next to responsibility.” The result was communication that informed without alarming, persuaded without overwhelming, and inspired without lecturing. In a world where brands are expected to stand for something meaningful, MAAD’s ability to fuse creative ambition with social conscience sets it apart. It is not creativity for decoration; it is creativity with a moral spine.
Another pillar of the agency’s strength is its investment in mentorship and talent shaping. All three individual winners highlighted that their achievements were possible because MAAD is a place where skill is nurtured, curiosity is encouraged, and young creatives are trusted with real responsibility. For Peter Kazibwe, mentorship is no longer a side responsibility—it is central to his leadership. “Seeing junior creatives sharpen their instincts, take calculated risks, and discover their voice is a joy I never anticipated would mean so much,” he says. “Originality does not just happen at MAAD McCann—it is cultivated.” Art Director of the Year Denis Kajura echoes the same sentiment from a design perspective: “When people grow, the work grows with them. That is the MAAD way.” In a region where mentorship is often incidental, MAAD has turned it into policy, shaping a new generation of creatives who are bold, confident, and technically grounded.
All these elements converge under MAAD FACTOR. It is more than a slogan; it is behavioural architecture. It governs how meetings are run, how disagreements are handled, how revisions are made, how risks are taken, and how ideas evolve. It is the reason MAAD’s work feels uniform in quality despite being produced by different teams and disciplines. Flexibility allows the agency to adapt. Accountability ensures rigor. Coherence guarantees unity. Teamwork enables synergy. Originality keeps the spark alive. Together, these values anchor the agency’s identity even in fast-moving cultural and economic landscapes.
In the end, MAAD McCann stands out because it understands that great creativity is not the result of spontaneous brilliance—it is the product of intentional culture. A culture that studies people, values process, celebrates collaboration, honours ethics, nurtures talent, and grounds itself in principles strong enough to guide decisions but flexible enough to evolve with the times. It is this fusion of head, heart, and discipline that carried MAAD to the top of the 2025 Silverbacks and continues to position it among Africa’s most exciting creative forces.
A Message to Clients, Partners, and the Industry
For Adris Kamuli, the awards serve as a testament to the agency’s evolution. “This year’s judging was incredibly tight,” he said. “Emerging as Agency of the Year in such a competitive field demonstrates the strength of our strategy, the depth of our creativity, and the trust we’ve built with our clients.”
Adris sees MAAD’s sweep not simply as victory, but as responsibility—to continue raising the bar for creative integrity, ethical communication, and African storytelling.
The Future Belongs to the Brave
The 2025 Silverback Awards offered MAAD McCann more than recognition. They offered momentum. The agency’s performance signalled a bold future: one where creativity meets ethics, where insight drives innovation, where brand storytelling shapes culture, and where African creativity claims its rightful place on the global stage.
As the applause fades, MAAD McCann steps forward not just as an award winner—but as a national and continental leader. One guided by purpose. Driven by collaboration. Rooted in culture. And fuelled by a relentless belief in the power of ideas.
