Creative Impact
The case for brand building in a digital economy and new routes to effectiveness dominated this year’s Creative Impact stream, co-curated by LIONS and WARC.
IT HAS TO BE HEINZ | HEINZ KETCHUP RETHINK, TORONTO | 2024 GRAND PRIX, CREATIVE EFFECTIVENESS LIONS
Only 6% of the
spent annually on advertising is truly effective, according to System1’s Chief Innovation Officer, Orlando Wood.
OREO #BRINGBACK2011 | OREO
LEO BURNETT, MUMBAI | 2024 SILVER, CREATIVE EFFECTIVENESS LIONS
“A golden age of advertising technology has not been a golden age for advertising effectiveness,” continued Wood. “We’ve almost forgotten that we have to interest people in the first place.” Writer, Academic and Consultant Mark Ritson said: “Creativity is great, but it's not enough.” Talking the audience through why econometrician Paul Dyson’s estimate that creativity contributes an impact score of 40% is overblown and actually closer to 3%, he said: “Our biggest job as a marketer is salience, it’s making your brand come to mind in buying situations.” Ritson praised the industry’s ability to understand the audience intuitively. In a world of constant communication, that means marketers need to understand what little they can convey with commitment and consistency. These three Creative Effectiveness Lion winners show different ways to do just that. Snack brand Oreo played on a superstition, time-travelling back to 2011 – the year it launched in India, and the country won the Cricket World Cup. If Oreo relaunched, went the logic of ‘Oreo #BRINGBACK2011’, maybe India would win again. Its ROI was 1:11, and it took a Silver Creative Effectiveness Lion.
Dove’s Gold Creative Effectiveness Lion winner ‘#TurnYourBack’ mobilised 68 influencer partners across eight markets to take a stand against the face-distorting Bold Glamour app. And Silver Creative Effectiveness Lion winner ‘Bring Home The Bud’ was a last-minute pivot by Budweiser that helped it become one of the most-talked-about brands around the 2022 Qatar World Cup.
#TURNYOURBACK | DOVE
OGILVY LONDON | 2024 GOLD, CREATIVE EFFECTIVENESS LIONS
BRING HOME THE BUD | BUDWEISER
WIEDEN+KENNEDY SÃO PAULO | 2024 SILVER, CREATIVE EFFECTIVENESS LIONS
The cost of dull? £10m
“The biggest challenge to overcome is the exceptional amount of nothing that people feel when they see advertising,” said System1’s Chief Customer Officer, Jon Evans. Fifty per cent of B2C and 60% of B2B ads are boring, evoke no emotion and have little likelihood of having an effect. In short, dull ads cost more money than creatively interesting ads: £10m in additional media spend, according to System1 and eatbigfish. This opens up creative opportunities for brands.
Bronze Creative Effectiveness Lion winner ‘Rock Star’ for business platform Workday released a humorous campaign that saw musicians reclaiming the word ‘rock star’ from the corporate world. It grew leads by 50% and also helped lift Workday’s share price.
ROCK STAR | WORKDAY
OGILVY CHICAGO | 2024 BRONZE, CREATIVE EFFECTIVENESS LIONS
IT HAS TO BE HEINZ | HEINZ KETCHUP
RETHINK, TORONTO
GRAND PRIX, CREATIVE EFFECTIVENESS LIONS | 2024
Pricing power
Tell your chief financial officer: the investment is worth it. “We invested enough that the results paid off four times,” revealed Luana Bumachar, Chief Marketing Officer at Solo Brands, who gave the inside track on the company’s Snoop Dogg campaign.
This backed up a big reveal from Dr Grace Kite, economist and founder of econometrics consultancy magic numbers: “Building pricing power is like going to the gym: you’ve got to keep at it.”
If a business is looking to improve its profitability, it stands to gain far more by raising prices than by cutting costs, Kite explained. “If your advertising allows you to put your price up by just 1%, McKinsey has estimated that this translates to an 8% increase in profit… It’s the secret superpower we don’t talk about in advertising.”
Simple truths
Diana Frost, Chief Growth Officer at Kraft Heinz, acknowledged the value of keeping it simple and leveraging the affection that audiences have for brands.
Heinz’s stance on simplicity and creative commitment over time paid off: ‘It Has To Be Heinz’ won the Creative Effectiveness Lions Grand Prix. Over the last five years, Heinz has reignited the brand’s appeal, growing its US retail sales by nearly 50% to reach $851m in 2023. Harjot Singh, Creative Effectiveness Lions Jury President and Global Chief Strategy Officer at McCann and McCann World Group, praised ‘It Has To Be Heinz’ for being both current and enduring. He said: “There’s a temptation to abandon something versus optimising what you have. This is unforgettable work with undeniable impact.”
DIANA FROST | CHIEF GROWTH OFFICER, KRAFT HEINZ | REVAMPING LEGACY BRANDS FOR TODAY'S AUDIENCE
WORLD CUP DELIVERY | PEDIDOSYA
GUT BUENOS AIRES
GOLD, CREATIVE EFFECTIVENESS LIONS | 2024
New routes to effectiveness
Digital brands like PedidosYa, Instacart and DoorDash showed new routes to creative effectiveness, deploying creativity across owned and paid channels that achieved results. Laura Jones, Chief Marketing Officer, Instacart, shared how her organisation blended performance and storytelling by going back to basics. ‘World Cup Delivery’ for food delivery company PedidosYa took a Gold Creative Effectiveness Lion. This used the arrival of the World Cup trophy to share a push notification from the app to Argentina. For every dollar spent on production, the brand achieved a return of $62. Creative Effectiveness Lions Juror Islam ElDessouky, Coca-Cola’s Global VP of Creative, described it as “product communication on steroids.” This kind of effective work reflects a reality for delivery platforms as they reach big brand status: “Utility, from a brand perspective, is a holy grail,” said DoorDash’s Chief Marketing Officer Kofi Amoo-Gottfried, who reminded the audience of a home truth: “A brand is built on what people rely on us for.”
LAURA JONES | CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER, INSTACART | HOW DO WE REBRAND 'BRAND'?
’WARC is a digital platform and advisory service that builds a compelling case for effective marketing through its evidence-based research insights and proprietary data tools. WARC is part of the LIONS Division. Read WARC’s Creative Impact Unpacked report.