Morning After Island Campaign

The WARC Creative 100, from the World Advertising Research Center is out with its 2024 rankings of the world’s most awarded campaigns and companies for creative excellence. 

The top-ranked campaign in this year’s tally is “Morning After Island” by Ogilvy Honduras for activist organization Grupo Estratégico PAE. The agency created a floating platform in international waters where women were ferried to thwart a national ban on emergency contraception. A social campaign supported the effort. 

Second place went to “Missing Matoaka” by BBDO Toronto for Indigenous arts and culture magazine Muskrat that reveals the true story of Pocahontas.  

In third, ‘Where to Settle’ by McCann Warsaw for Mastercard, launched a digital platform to help Ukrainians find places of refuge outside big cities.  

This year’s top agency: BETC Paris, which had three campaigns in the top 100, including ones Women in Games, Duolingo and Canal+. The Havas Creative Group agency accrued a winning margin of more than 100 points.  

Independent agency Rethink Toronto placed second, up from 17th last year, with three campaigns ranked in the top 100 including two for Heinz and one for Penguin Random House.  

We Believers New York, took third place, up from 8th in 2023 with two campaigns highly ranked for Corona.  

The top agency network was Ogilvy for the fourth year in a row, with 37 offices contributing to its total and 9 in the top 50, including five David offices. The network was also responsible for 12 of the top 100 campaigns this year.  

DDB Worldwide retained its 2nd position with 6 agencies in the top 50 and 7 campaigns in the top 100. Having rebranded from VMLY&R and merged with Wunderman Thompson, newly created VML enters the ranking in 3rd place.  

The top holding company for creativity for the second straight year was WPP, parent company to both Ogilvy and VML.  

Burger King ranked a top brand for creativity for sixth straight year.  Corona and McDonald’s took second and third respectively. 

The top-three-ranked advertisers were Anheuser-Busch InBev, Unilever and Apple respectively.  

The USA retained the number ranking as most awarded country for creativity– a rank it has held since 2006. However, for the first time in 10 years, the UK has dropped out of 2nd place, beaten by France.  

Amy Rodgers, Head of Content, WARC Creative, noted that, “The creative use of digital technology is prevalent in this year’s Creative 100, used in ‘The First Digital Nation’ for Government Of Tuvalu, ‘McEnroe vs McEnroe’ for Michelob Ultra, and ‘Backup Ukraine’ for Polycam / UNESCO among others.” 

She also notes that women’s rights-related campaigns are prominent in the top rankings this year’s rankings.  

The annual Creative 100 Ranking is a tally of the work that was awarded by the most important global and regional creative shows in 2023. The awards tracked are determined by a yearly global panel survey and in consultation with the WARC Rankings Advisory Board.