Heineken wins top spot in Kantar’s Creative Effectiveness Awards

Heineken’s global TV ad, “Whateverken”, from Le Pub (based in the Netherlands) was ranked No 1 in Kantar’s 2024 Creative Effectiveness Awards.

This year two South African ads were named among the top 10 most creative and effective ads: Savanna’s “Boss jokes” from WPP Grey-Liquid and Cadbury’s “First date – for your date” from Ogilvy South Africa. Colgate’s “Colgate Smile Stories” from WPP@CP is among the top 15 digital ads that were short-listed.

Kantar’s Creative Effectiveness Awards celebrate the best TV, Digital/Social, Print/Outdoor and AI-tested ads from around the world. It is the only awards programme built on the opinions of consumers globally. Altogether 1.97-million consumers participated in the ad testing in 2023.

The winning ads were those consumers found the most impactful among the thousands that Kantar tested in 2023. This provides insight into what drives advertising effectiveness and what the creative techniques are that the world’s best advertisers use to forge connections with consumers.

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

The winning ads reveal five ways to create connections with consumers.

1. Courage: showing creative bravery to connect with customers

A great example of this in action is Nana/Libresse/Bodyform’s “Periodsomnia” ad, the No 9 TV winner, which portrays the experience of bad sleep during a woman’s period, without any sugarcoating.

2. Catastrophising: grabbing attention and connecting emotionally through drama

The No 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

Danish Road Safety Council Rådet for Sikker Trafik’s 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 that is consistently applied.

 5. Comical: make them laugh and connect through humour.

No 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.

“Advertising has the power to drive brand growth if it’s creative and effective,” says Jane Ostler, EVP, global thought leadership at Kantar.

“One of the top priorities for chief marketing officers is to predispose more people to their brand. When people are predisposed, they are clear about what a brand means to them and how it stands out from 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.”

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

The big take-out: “Advertising has the power to drive brand growth if it’s creative and effective.”