WARC (previously the World Advertising Research Centre), which offers advertising best practice, evidence and insights from the world’s leading brands, has released the 2016 results of the Warc 100, an annual ranking of the world’s best marketing campaigns and companies according to their business impact. The Warc 100 rankings are based on performance in effectiveness and strategy awards around the world, and are built on a rigorous methodology developed in consultation with Kings College London.

The top-ranking campaign was ‘Penny the Pirate’, developed by Saatchi & Saatchi and OMD for Australian optical chain OPSM, which neatly combined traditional and digital media, producing an engaging printed book and app to highlight vision problems in children. More than 126,000 parents bought the book; the number of eye tests conducted by OPSM increased by 23 per cent year-on-year; and its sales also grew by 22 per cent).

A number of themes emerge from this year’s top 100 campaigns. The first is that digital-led campaigns are delivering business results. Many of the winning campaigns use digital elements to deliver scale: in all, 11 of the 20 top-ranked campaigns led with digital channels. Notable uses of digital include the ‘Live Test Series’ (ranked fifth) by Volvo Trucks – its YouTube video views of over 100m reached far beyond the brand’s niche target audience of truck drivers and resulted in a 23 per cent growth in sales in the fourth quarter of 2013 – and ‘If We Made It’ (ranked sixth) by Newcastle Brown Ale, which used online video to parody the advertising hype around the Super Bowl, increasing volume sales by over 20 per cent.

The study also reveals that more brands are using social activism extremely effectively to drive business. Pioneered by Unilever-owned brand Dove over the past decade (and sometimes dubbed ‘The Dove Effect’), marketers around the world have learned that taking a strong, socially-progressive stance can help drive business impact. This need for brands to be seen as good corporate citizens has informed many top-performing marketing strategies, as is reflected in several top 20-ranked campaigns including ‘#LikeAGirl’ (second); ‘Inglorious Fruits and Vegetables’ (fourth); ‘I Will What I Want’ (10th); ‘Touch the Pickle’ (12th); and ‘This Girl Can’ (20th).

Most brands choose relatively uncontentious causes, from encouraging female empowerment to cutting food waste, though with its ‘This is Wholesome’ campaign (seventh), US brand Honey Maid took a braver stand and selected a potentially divisive topic: celebrating alternative family structures.

Procter & Gamble has improved its points total and ranking for each of the last three years and had nine campaigns in this year’s top 100, versus Unilever’s three. Last year, the FMCG giants’ positions were reversed: Unilever claimed first place overall, with six campaigns in the top 100, while P&G, in second, had three.

Both companies have initiated an efficiency drive over the past few years, cutting spend on ‘non-working media’, a strategic change that has sparked debate about whether this limits the creation of impactful breakthrough advertising.

Procter & Gamble’s strong performance in the current Warc 100 reflects the company’s continuing ability to develop powerful advertising that gets people talking. While Unilever remains an effective advertiser, WARC says the latest results raise questions about the potential impact of cost cuts on the development of breakthrough marketing ideas.

The study breaks the results down into a number of mini league tables. Here are some highlights:

Top 5 Countries
1. US
2. UK
3. India
4. China
5. Australia

Top 5 Advertisers
1. Procter & Gamble
2. Unilever
3. The Coca-Cola Company
4. Heineken
5. PepsiCo

Top 5 Brands
1. Coca-Cola
2. McDonald’s
3. OPSM
4. IKEA
5. Always

Top 5 Creative Agencies
1. MullenLowe Lintas Group Mumbai
2. Droga5 New York
3. Ogilvy & Mather New York
4. Leo Burnett Chicago
5. AMV BBDO (UK)

Top 5 Media Agencies
1. Starcom MediaVest Group Chicago
2. Starcom MediaVest Group New York
3. OMD Sydney
4. PHD London
5. OMD New York

Top 5 Digital Agencies
1. ARC (US)
2. The Marketing Store (US)
3. Critical Mass (Canada)
4. Marketing Arm (US)
5. Geometry Global Bogota

“The Warc 100 represents the best work in marketing – breakthrough campaigns that have delivered tangible results for their clients,” said David Tiltman, head of content at Warc. “The rankings are a benchmark of excellence in the industry. The clients and agencies that feature in them are some of the best in the business.”
The Warc 100 is a ranking of advertising and marketing campaigns that have worked. Warc tracks advertising competitions around the world – all of which require entrants to show the business impact of a campaign, rather than solely recognizing the campaign’s creativity.

Warc tracked more than 2,000 winners in 79 different effectiveness and strategy competitions to compile the rankings. Warc assigns points to these campaigns (and the brands and agencies behind them) based on the prizes they win in those competitions. Each competition is weighted based on how rigorous and prestigious it is – Warc determines this via results from a poll of more than 100 senior strategists in markets around the world.