38% of the world’s most creative campaigns are effective

Each year, WARC, the international marketing information company, tracks the results of the top global and regional award shows for creativity, media and effectiveness for the WARC Rankings, the ultimate benchmark for advertising.
To assess how often highly creative work is also effective, WARC has analysed the data from the 2016-2019 WARC Creative 100 Rankings (the world’s most awarded campaigns for creativity) and the WARC Effective 100 Rankings (the world’s most awarded campaigns for effectiveness) covering awards shows tracked between 2015 and 2018.

The findings are now published in WARC’s latest research on the health of creativity.Amy Rodgers, Managing Editor, Research and Rankings, WARC, comments: “Over the past year, there has been a lot of discussion around the concern that short-term strategies, which focus on immediate gain, are driving a crisis in creative effectiveness.

“With this in mind, we’ve compared the data from the WARC Creative and Effective Rankings to see how many creative ideas were subsequently awarded for effectiveness, and what can be learnt from these successful campaigns that can help marketers drive long-term brand health.”

Of the 332 creative ideas ranked in the WARC Creative 100 over the last four years, 126 (38%) were also awarded for effectiveness in a show tracked by the WARC Rankings. Of these 126 ideas, 33 (10%) also ranked in the WARC Effective 100, deeming them to be both highly creative and highly effective.

Following WARC’s analysis of the 126 most creative and effective ideas, five characteristics have emerged: Lead media: Ideas awarded both creatively and for effectiveness are almost twice as likely to lead with TV as any other channelCreative strategy: Emotion is used in more than half of the ideasCampaign objective: They focus their objectives on brand buildingHard metrics: Measurement is focused on sales, PR and social mediaSector: They are most likely to come from the retail sector.

A deck which includes the case studies of the 33 highly successful ideas for both creativity and effectiveness across alcoholic drinks, automotive, clothing & accessories, financial services, FMCG, food, leisure & entertainment, media & publishing, pharma & healthcare, retail, soft drinks, technology & electronics, telecoms & utilities, is available to WARC subscribers. 

The WARC Rankings 2020 will be released early March. For more information, data and to view previous WARC Rankings, successor to the Gunn Report, go to warc.com/rankings.