• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, April 5, 2017

WARC (World Advertising Research Center) has released the 2017 edition of its WARC 100 report that tracks what it terms “The World’s Best Campaigns,” as well as top agencies, agency networks, holding companies, brands and advertisers.

The top-ranked campaign in this year’s report is an effort from BBDO and Mediacom for Procter & Gamble’s detergent brand Ariel.

The Campaign, called “Share The Load” ran in India, and tackled the deeply rooted view in the country that women should handle household chores with a social campaign suggesting that both men and women should share household duties.

A film ran across online, cinema and TV while celebrity endorsements, earned media and campaign-related events helped drive conversation. Nearly 1.6 million men took a pledge to “share the load” while Ariel more than doubled sales.

Number two on the WARC list this year was the UK retailer John Lewis’ Christmas campaigns (four season’s worth were cited) from adam&eveDDB and Manning Gottlieb OMD. The campaigns were cited for their use of emotional and product-free storytelling that ran across online and offline for what WARC called an “immersive experience.”

Ranked number three was a campaign called “Lucy The Robot” from agency Atomic 212 Group for American brand Double Robotics that used the campaign to launch a robotic product in the Australian market. The campaign included an earned media stunt that featured “Lucy,” a telepresence robot,that was first in line to buy an iPhone 6s outside the Sydney Apple store. The stunt was covered in 4,000 news stories and reached 123 million people globally, resulting in over 12,000 sales inquiries.

Rounding out the top 5 ranking was a campaign for German consumer electronics brand Media Markt called “Rabit Race” from Ogilvy & Mather and UM and an effort for UK’s The Economist from Proximity London called “Raising Eyebrows and Subscriptions.”

The report also provides rankings for an array of agency categories. According to WARC to the top-5 best creative agencies respectively are adam&eveDDB (UK); AMV BBDO (UK); BBDO Mumbai (India); Grey London (UK) and last year’s top-ranked shop MullenLowe Lintas Group Mumbai (India).

In the media agency category the top-5 shops are Starcom New York; Mindshare New York; Atomic 212 Group; Manning Gottlieb OMD, and Mindshare Istanbul.

The top-5 digital specialists included Proximity London, Affinity (Australia), Ketchum New York, Trisect (USA) and R/GA New York.

The top-5 agency networks: BBDO Worldwide; Ogilvy & Mather Advertising; McCann Erickson; OMD Worldwide and Starcom.

The top-5 holding companies: WPP, Omnicom Group, Interpublic Group, Publicis Groupe and Dentsu.

The top-5 brands: Vodafone, Ariel, John Lewis, IKEA and Dove. The top-5 advertisers: P&G, Unilever, Nestle, PepsiCo and Heineken.

The report, titled WARC 100, tracks effectiveness and strategy competitions around the world to determine its rankings. More on the report and its methodology can be found here.