A campaign in India for Carvaan, a radio pre-loaded with nostalgic music, tops the WARC Effective 100, a ranking of effective marketing campaigns around the world announced today; Unilever is the top-ranked advertiser and Coca-Cola the top-ranked brand.

The WARC Effective 100 is an independent global index of effective marketing campaigns. The rankings, which include the most awarded campaigns, agencies, networks, holding companies, brands, advertisers and countries, are based on WARC’s analysis of the 2018 results of the most important marketing effectiveness and strategy competitions around the world, as determined by the industry.
  • Top marketing campaigns: Let’s make viral products instead, for Carvaan by The Womb Mumbai; Healthy hands chalk sticks, for Savlon by Ogilvy Mumbai; India’s newest status symbol, for Harpic by McCann New Delhi.
  • Top agency networks: McCann Worldgroup; BBDO Worldwide; Ogilvy.
  • Top advertisers: Unilever; Mars; The Coca-Cola Company.
  • Top brands: Coca-Cola; McDonald’s; Burger King.

Click here to see a summary of the WARC Effective 100 rankings, broken down by campaign, agency, brand and country.

There are three agency rankings in the WARC Effective 100: creative, digital/specialist and media. McCann New Delhi tops the creative rankings table having produced three highly-ranked campaigns: as well as ‘India's Newest Status Symbol’ ranked #3, ‘The Door Blouse’ for Narayana Health at #20 and ‘Helping India cope with the death of cash’ for Paytm at #23.

The top five digital/specialist agencies for effectiveness this year are all new to the top 50. Tribeca Antartyca’s work on a number of different campaigns in Peru sent it to the top of the table. Salmon, London, follows at #2 and Ogilvy & SocialLab in Brussels at #3.

UK-based agencies dominate the media agency leaderboard, with seven placed in the top eleven. MediaCom London takes the lead at #1 winning campaigns for a variety of brands including Audi, Skittles, and DFS. Carat London follow at #2 and Mindshare Istanbul #3.

David Tiltman, head of content, WARC commented: “The WARC Effective 100 reflects the best of commercial creativity. This year, the top two campaigns involve product innovation that drove breakthrough results.”

“They reflect the potential for marketing strategy to move upstream, tackling big business problems as well as communications challenges.”

Sourced from WARC