The 2014 Warc 100 was released Wednesday, naming the top 100 most-awarded campaigns and the organization’s top 50 creative, media and digital agencies. A number of Canadian campaigns made the grade, and several agencies placed very well in the global rankings.
The Ontario Ministry of Health‘s 2013 “Quit the Denial” anti-smoking campaign (created by Proximity Toronto and BBDO Toronto), ranked 36th on the Warc 100 – the highest-ranked Canadian campaign.
The campaign introduced the viral phenomenon of “social farting” to Canadians and earned Proximity a spot on the top ten digital agency ranking.
Warc ranks campaigns and agencies based on their performance at 87 of the world’s top awards competitions, with a focus on strategic effectiveness and social impact. A total of 2,200 campaigns were reviewed, and agency rankings were established based on how their work ranked.
BBDO and Proximity Group Canada chairman Gerry Frascione credits Nancy Crimi-Lamanna, a BBDO associate creative director on the project, for making the campaign as strong as it was. He said he believes the campaign succeeded so well on Warc’s social impact scale because it paired a breakthrough human insight with a social-first execution, where viewers were driven back to Facebook and Twitter to talk about their own experiences.
“It’s funny, we were at a PepsiCo conference, and there was a campaign shown for K-Mart that used crass humour and failed miserably because there was absolutely no insight,” he said. “The brilliance of ‘Social Smoking’ is that it started with a human insight, that social smokers don’t think they’re smokers.”
Toronto agency Lowe Roche took home the title for highest-ranked Canadian creative agency, thanks to its “Make Health Last” campaign for the Heart & Stroke Foundation, which ranked 39th on the 100.
To promote heart health, the 2013 campaign gave viewers a palpable example of how decisions today can affect their lives later on. The centrepiece ad compared two possible futures for one man’s old age — happily playing with grandchildren versus pulling an oxygen tank around an long-term care home.
Lowe Roche came in 24th on the creative agency Top 50.
In total, eight Canadian campaigns earned Warc 100 rankings. Aside from “Quit the Denial” and “Make Health Last”:
• “Budweiser Red Lights” by Anomaly/UM ranked 48th
• Grey Canada’s “Milk Carton 2.0” for the Missing Children Society of Canada ranked 56th
• two campaigns by Cossette — Amnesty International Canada’s “Minute of Silence, Minute of Hope” and Royal Canadian Mint’s “Heart of the Arctic,” tied for 70th
• “Undeading,” another effort for the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada from Agency59, ranked 90th
• Kraft’s Mio ads by Taxi, earned a spot at 92.
Thanks to those ads, Lowe Roche, BBDO Toronto, Cossette Montreal, Taxi Toronto and UM Toronto all made the top 50 in their respective agency categories.
Globally, Unilever took home the two top campaign spots, with its global “Dove Real Beauty Sketches” and a little-known Indian campaign by Lowe Lintas/PHD in the number one spot. Unilever and Lowe created a free mobile radio station for the Indian province of Bihar. Since the 104 million people living in Bihar have little access to TV, radio or newspapers — but they do have mobile phones — Unilever built a service where people can dial a toll free number from a mobile device to hear 15 minutes of music and entertainment (with Unilever ads cut in between).
Not surprisingly, the agency behind the campaign, Lowe Lintas Mumbai, ranked first among the top 50 creative agencies, while PHD Mumbai ranked second among top media agencies. Starcom MediaVest Chicago was first.
