Warc unveils world's smartest campaigns

Warc, 10 July 2014

LONDON: Warc is today launching the Warc 100, an annual ranking of the world's best marketing campaigns, based on performance in effectiveness and strategy competitions. 

At the top of this year's Warc 100 rankings is an Egyptian campaign for Vodafone. 'Fakka', by JWT Cairo, introduced Micro Credit Recharge Cards for low-income Egyptians, and developed a new distribution channel by turning the cards into a form of low-denomination currency that could be used by shopkeepers in place of small change.

The next two spots were taken by 'Small Business Saturday', a US campaign for American Express by Digitas and Crispin Porter & Bogusky, and 'It's More Fun in the Philippines', by BBDO Guerrero for the Philippines Department of Tourism.

Fourth is 'Thank You, Mom', a US campaign for Procter & Gamble by Wieden + Kennedy, while fifth place goes to 'Overstay Checkout' for Art Series Hotels in Australia by Naked Communications.

The Warc 100 is designed to be a benchmark for commercial creativity. To compile the rankings, Warc tracked more than 1700 winners in 75 different competitions. It assigned points based on the awards won (for example, Gold, Silver or Bronze), then weighted those points based on the competition's rigour and prestige in the global industry.

Warc has developed a proprietary methodology to weight competitions in consultation with Professor Douglas West, Professor of Marketing at King's College London.

The Warc 100 has been developed to reflect the growing importance of strategic thinking and measurement rigour in marketing. It will showcase the best work from around the world, and will help raise awareness of the leading cases.

"The growing number of effectiveness and strategy awards around the world shows how important it is to prove marketing can make a difference," said Louise Ainsworth, CEO of Warc. "The Warc 100 will rank the best of the best. It will help brands and agencies keep up to date with strategies that have a commercial impact, and to benchmark their own performance against their peers."

Amal el Masri, Chief Strategy Officer at JWT MENA commented: "Egyptians are resourceful by nature and this can been seen in many aspects of everyday life, including the habit of replacing change with low value items. Vodafone Fakka combines innovation with this inherent cultural trait to provide a really relevant and useful solution to its customers."

The full listing of the top 100 campaigns, including links to case studies, can be found here. Warc will reveal further data from the Warc 100, including the rankings of the world's top agencies and brands, later in the summer.

Data sourced from Warc