Coke Named Smartest Brand in the World

Coca-Cola has been named as the world’s smartest brand, and Unilever as the world’s smartest advertiser, according to a new study.

Warc, the global marketing intelligence service, has today revealed the top brands and advertisers from the Warc 100 database, which tracks performance in effectiveness and strategy competitions.

Louise Ainsworth, CEO of Warc, said: “These rankings show which companies are really using marketing communications to build their businesses. The Warc 100 allows client-side marketers to benchmark the performance of their marketing activity, and to see which companies are able to link creativity with business performance.”

The Warc 100 is a benchmark for commercial creativity, allowing organisations to compare their performance with their peers. It is an annual list of the world’s best campaigns, agencies and brands, based on their performance in effectiveness and strategy competitions.

To compile the rankings, Warc tracked more than 1700 winners in 75 different competitions. It assigned points based on the awards won (for example, Gold, Silver or Bronze), then weighted those points based on the competition’s rigour and prestige in the global industry. Warc has developed a proprietary methodology to weight competitions in consultation with Professor Douglas West, Professor of Marketing at King’s College London.

The top 5 brands in the Warc 100 are:

Brand Product Category Points

Coca-Cola Soft Drinks 274.0
McDonald’s Retail 233.8
Vodafone Telecoms 220.6
Dove Toiletries & Cosmetics 151.2
Pepsi Soft Drinks 113.4

The top 5 advertisers in the Warc 100 are:

Advertiser Product Categories Points

Unilever Food, Household & Domestic 550.7
PepsiCo Soft Drinks, Food 431.3
The Coca-Cola Co. Soft Drinks 407.5
Mondelez Food 284.7
Procter & Gamble Food, Household & Domestic 271.9

In July, Warc announced the world’s smartest 100 campaigns, based on their performance in competitions across calendar year 2013.

Four of the 100 were Coca-Cola campaigns, with the brand’s flagship global ‘Share a Coke’ initiative, developed by Ogilvy & Mather Sydney, the top-ranked at number 20. Also represented were campaigns from McCann Philippines (‘The OFW Project’, 58th), Socialab in Beijing (‘Nickname Summer Campaign’, 88th) and Ogilvy & Mather Bogotá (‘Download Concert’, 92nd).

For Unilever, the star performer was 9th-ranked ‘Real Beauty Sketches’, developed by Ogilvy & Mather São Paulo for Dove, its personal care brand. Also on the top 20, in 16th, was ‘Help a Child Reach Five’, a community initiative launched in India by Lowe Lintas, SapientNitro and PHD for Lifebuoy, a soap brand.

The Warc 100 has been developed to reflect the growing importance of strategic thinking and measurement rigour in marketing. It will showcase the best work, and will help raise awareness of the leading cases.
Earlier this week, Warc announced that Colenso BBDO was the world’s smartest creative agency, while BBDO Worldwide topped the rankings for agency networks

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