Warc has analysed the campaigns in its Effective 100 and found three key themes. They are not surprising, but “breaking the mould” is not always the road most travelled.
1. It’s harder than ever to gain people’s attention.
There is more competition for attention than ever before. Capturing the attention of consumers, now requires innovation in both creativity and media placement.
The four main ways in which the most effective campaigns attracted attention were:
a. Creativity, and in particular the use of emotional appeals. 59% of the campaigns in the ranking used this approach.
b. The growing use of influencers – more than 20% of case studies in the Effective 100 contained specific influencer elements.
c. The use of PR-driven stunts as a means to catch the attention of both consumers and the media is a recurring theme – as seen in Fearless Girl, The Mud Soldier for Visit Flanders and Google Home of the Whopper.
d. A greater focus on unconventional media placement, such as reaching people when they don’t expect it, as seen in India’s Newest Status Symbol for Harpic.
Faris Yakob, Founder of strategy and innovation consultancy, Genius Steals, noted, “This year’s WARC’s Effective 100 suggests that the most effective ads, all over the world, don’t look like ads.” He added that one way in which effective brands overcame ad distrust was to make things, such as Savlon’s Soap Sticks and Saregama’s Carvaan.
2. Own something distinctive to make people recognise and remember you.
There are so many ads. Distinctive brand assets are emerging as a key weapon of effective campaigns.
Success stories in the Effective 100 include Kevin the Carrot: How Aldi UK won Christmas with the help of a humble carrot (ranked #25), the Made for More campaign for Guinness (ranked #31), and The Door Blouse campaign in India for Narayana Health (ranked #20).
Heather Andrew, UK CEO, Neuro-Insight, commented, “Nowadays many brands are developing and codifying a wider set of distinctive assets that can be transferred across platforms as a way of delivering instant recognition.
“In terms of brain response this makes complete sense. In brand communication, memory response is crucial – if something doesn’t get into memory it can’t possibly affect our future behaviour – and one of the crucial characteristics of memory is that it works by association.”
3. Brand building and performance need to be applied together.
Brand-building data and creative stories worked together in many of the most effective campaigns, as they did in Beauty And Brains for Aldi (ranked #8) and IKEA’s The Wonderful Everyday (#43).
Dan Hagen, Global Chief Strategy Officer, iProspect, explained, “In the mad rush of today’s world, we rarely spend enough time and effort really diagnosing the problem we have before we jump to solutions. We need to think of it like a three-legged race rather than a relay. It is about different talents working in tandem and the collision of those specialism will drive a different level of performance.”
A summary of WARC’s Lessons from the global effectiveness rankings can be downloaded here.
The full report is available to WARC subscribers and includes in-depth study of the three themes with commentary from industry experts, a spotlight on Carvaan for Saregama, the top-ranked campaign, data analysis behind the winning campaigns, and expert commentary across the results of the Effective 100.
