Kahlúa, LG Electronics, Absolut, Delta Air Lines, Bosch and Amazon Web Services rank as most creative and effective. Awards Highlight Four Imperatives to Increasing Creative Performance among North American Consumers.
New York, NY, July 24 – Kantar, the world’s leading marketing data and analytics business and indispensable brand partner to 96 of the world’s 100 biggest advertisers, today announced the winners of the first ever North American Creative Effectiveness Awards. Spotlighting the most creative and effective ads in 2023 they’ve identified fundamentals for growing creative impact exponentially, including the ability of the best content to gain attention, drive engagement, deliver meaningful difference, and elevate digital ads for channel context.
Creating marketing impact has never been more important or challenging, and marketers would do well to maximize creative quality. According to Kantar normative data, creative quality is the single biggest driver of growth in brand impact, driving 49% of brand impact across ad campaigns.
“Great creative doesn’t come easily. It’s not good enough for an ad to simply be noticed or funny and engaging,” said Kerry Benson, SVP Creative Lead at Kantar, “The best ads do so while keeping the brand at the heart of their story. This year’s Kantar Creative Effectiveness winners stand out for creating clever brand memories that stick and contribute to sales and brand equity. Congratulations to all the teams behind these fantastic campaigns.”
The North American Kantar Creative Effectiveness Awards uses the LINK+ ad testing solution, which is independently validated via the Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB), to spotlight ads that performed well and were successful in driving brand predisposition in the short and long-term. LINK+ validation has proved that creative and effective ads are 4 x more likely to see an increase not only in sales and volume but also in actual return on marketing investment ‘profit’. Over a quarter of a million ads have now been researched via Link, benefitting from not only its predictiveness, but also the diagnostic measures that help to guide ad optimization to maximize results.
Winners underwent two layers of analysis, a quantitative assessment to identify the most effective ads based on scores in 2023 from Kantar’s LINK+ ad testing solution, and qualitative analysis to identify the most creative content.
Winners include:
Digital/Social:
- Kahlúa: “15s Gasp feat Selma Hayek” Facebook ad, Wieden + Kennedy (USA)
- LG Electronics: “Unwired. Perfection.” YouTube ad, TBWA (Chiat, Day New York) (USA)
- Absolut: “Introducing a Wild, New Flavor” Facebook ad, The Mix Stockholm (USA)
TV :
- Delta Air Lines: “Kaleidoscope” - Wieden + Kennedy (USA)
- Bosch: “Own the Kitchen” - Vitro (USA)
- AWS (Amazon Web Services): “The Puck Drops Here - CA”- Joint London (Canada)
Four creative imperatives to delivering high performing ads:
Gaining Attention
Attention has never been harder to capture and maintain, with consumers opting out of ads and leveraging skip features. Campaigns that master attention know how to minimize the skip or scroll and deliver more viewers to be influenced. Ads employing fast cuts, unexpected imagery, movement, color, or sound in interesting ways make you watch.
Excellent examples of winning ads that have a strong grip on attention include Motrin, Asahi Super Dry, La Roche-Posay, Froot Loops, and Bosch, among others.
Creating Engagement
While gaining attention is crucial, captivating the viewer is just as important. Ads that can make the viewer feel something – an emotional response that stimulates engagement – are more likely to leave memories and associations in the brain that positively frame later decision-making. Active Attention reflects content that causes the viewer to smile, frown, laugh, or cry. Great creative content emerges where emotional engagement is strongly integrated with brand focus and message articulation.
Ads that create engagement and positive memories are defined by great storytelling, shared connections, human narratives, humor, and pure joy.
According to Kantar’s analysis, LG Electronics, L.L.Bean, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, Kahlúa, and Hershey’s all demonstrate how to create high engagement.
Delivering Meaningful Difference
Kantar BrandZ data shows that brands using their communications to amplify a message of meaningful difference grow faster and benefit from premium pricing. Brands which create this meaningful difference are experts at tapping into underlying aspirations and building mental connections with consumers. These connections, when strong and consistent, Predispose More People to buy the brand more often, in more places, and for a higher price.
Delta Air Lines, Safelite, Coca-Cola and Dove Men are all prime examples of campaigns that drove meaningful difference home with their audiences.
Elevating For Channel Context
Digital is no longer a single isolated 'channel' but an ecosystem of channels with fragmented platforms, formats, and styles. This means digital advertisers face new challenges in optimizing ad length, channel customization, and contextual fit. Successful digital content captures the essence of the target audience.
Winners that exemplify "Elevating For Channel Context” include Johnnie Walker, Aveeno Baby, Perrier-Jouët, Absolut, and JBL.
To access the full learnings from Kantar 2024 Creative Effectiveness analysis and all the 2024 North American winners, click here.
About Kantar
Kantar is the world’s leading marketing data and analytics business and an indispensable brand partner to the world’s top companies, including 96 of the world’s 100 biggest advertisers.
We have a complete, unique and rounded understanding of people around the world: how they think, feel and act, globally and locally in over 90 markets.
We don’t just help clients understand what’s happened, we tell them why and how they can shape the future.