South Africa shines in the global 2024 Kantar Creative Effectiveness Awards

The award winners showcase the ads that consumers found the most impactful among the thousands that Kantar tested in 2023. The results provide insights into what drives advertising effectiveness and the creative techniques used by the world’s best advertisers to forge powerful connections with consumers.

To celebrate the fifth year of the awards, Kantar expanded its TV and Digital/Social categories to include 15 winners each, and, for the first time, are awarding creative quality evaluated by its AI-based ad testing. LINK AI is a powerful, AI-based solution for testing digital and TV advertising, trained with consumer insight, and backed by Kantar’s LINK+ database of over 260,000 ads.

Heineken’s global ad, ‘Whateverken’ from Le Pub is the number one ranked TV ad. An excellent example of a global asset winning in a local market, as well as topping a global chart.

Savanna’s ‘Boss jokes’ from WPP Grey-Liquid and Cadbury’s ‘First date – for your date’ from Ogilvy South Africa make the top 10 most creative and effective ads.

Colgate’s ‘Colgate Smile Stories’ from WPP@CP is short-listed in the top 15 digital ads.

Commenting on the wins, Saiesh Ajudhiya, director of media and creative at Kantar South Africa said, “At Kantar, we love great creative content, and we love it even more when that creativity is harnessed to deliver against brand and marketing objectives. The winning ads create an emotional connection with their audience, whether through humour or human truth, each ad is relatable and leaves a lasting impression.”

The most creative and effective ads of 2023

The best creative across TV, Digital/Social and Print/Outdoor comes from a diverse range of brands, categories and markets – highlighting the universal power of harnessing creativity to build meaningful connections with consumers.

TV

Digital/Social

Print/Outdoor

Tested by LINK AI

Download the report to view the full list of winning and shortlisted ads.

Winning ads reveal five ways to create consumer connections

Kantar’s Creative Effectiveness Awards 2024 winners illustrate the ways that brands can forge a close connection with their audience. In the report, Kantar’s creative experts present five key themes that encapsulate the differing ways the winning ads have successfully achieved this.

1. Courage: Showing creative bravery to connect with customers.
   A great example of this in action is Nana/Libresse/Bodyform’s ‘Periodsomnia’ ad, the #9 TV winner, which portrays the experience of bad sleep when on your period, without any sugarcoating.

2. Catastrophising: Grabbing attention and connecting emotionally through drama.
   The #1 Digital/Social winner, a Facebook ad for the Mexican coffee liqueur brand Kahlúa, is a great example of this trend, immersing viewers in telenovela-inspired melodrama.

3. Candid: Down to earth advertising that connects with real life.
   Rådet for Sikker Trafik’s (The Danish Road Safety Council) public information ad ‘Dit svar er bedre sent end aldrig (Your reply is better late than never)’ is a great example of the trend for ads which reject perfection to connect with viewers.

4. Consistent: Know when you have a good thing - connecting over time.
   Heineken developed award-winning creatives across all three media categories for its superb ‘H150 Whateverken’ campaign, showcasing the power of a good idea, consistently applied.

5. Comical: Make them laugh and connect through humour.
   #12 in the Digital/Social category is an ad for TENA Men which uses humour to address the sensitive issue of male incontinence and convey a serious message in an informative yet humorous way.

Creative trends 2024: Crafting effective digital ads

Senamile Zungu, Kantar  1 Feb 2024

Commenting on the award winners, Jane Ostler, EVP, Global Thought Leadership, Kantar, said: “Advertising has the power to drive brand growth if it’s creative and effective. One of the top priorities for CMOs is to predispose more people to their brand. When people are predisposed, they are clear on what a brand means to them and how it stands out from the others. Our award-winning ads are a real showcase of creativity harnessed in support of commercial goals, and demonstrate what it looks like when marketers take digital advertising seriously and optimise their creative at scale.”

Download the report to see the full list of award winners in each category, visit www.kantar.com.

Register for the Creative consumer connections webinar at 10am and 5pm Thursday 25 April, and available on demand afterwards.

About Kantar Creative Effectiveness Awards

All the ads we showcase are brought to us by our clients and their agencies. We select our winners on a quantitative level from our LINK+ scores ‘as judged by the consumer’ and a qualitative level by review across the global creative team of our top scoring ads. Our LINK solution gives us benchmarked creative performance metrics and a validated predicted short-term sales lift, meaning our winners are a magic combination of creativity and effectiveness, driving sales and brand equity.

The awards are split into three categories: TV, digital/social and print/outdoor, with winners selected from thousands of ads researched in the previous year from around 80 different countries.

This year we are also awarding creative evaluated by LINK AI, in a new category. LINK AI is a powerful, artificial intelligence-based solution for testing digital and TV advertising, trained with consumer insight, backed by our LINK+ norms database of over 260,000 ads.

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