With average viewership hovering around 100 million, it’s no mystery why advertisers invest in securing buzzworthy Big Game media buys. But do those millions of viewers translate into effective marketing? In celebration of this weekend’s game, we’re diving into five recent Effie Award-winning Super Bowl campaigns that scored a marketing effectiveness touchdown.

 

This year's Global Effie Celebration began with a thought-provoking conversation about the future of communication and the new dimensions of connection. 

The expert panel, moderated by Catharine Duane, Global Marketing Manager of Facebook IQ at Meta, features Dave Meeker, Head of Design & Innovation, Americas and Global Chief Innovation Officer at dentsu Creative and Adam Simon, US Head of Innovation at IPG's UM.

The Ideas That Work Summit distilled the learnings and inspiration behind the 2021 Effie UK-winning entries, tackled the metrics successful entrepreneurs and leaders keep their eyes on, and explored one of the UK industry's most unconscious biases: class. 

Discussions, keynotes and debates were all delivered in 30-minute sessions and each one is available to view on demand.  But, if you want our top pick of learnings before you dive in, here are our top 10 takeaways: 

Effectiveness is often seen in the rear-view mirror as agencies craft strategy papers or award entries to tell a compelling story. But for business, it's an iterative journey as you navigate your way to your next goal.

This session is about effectiveness in the real world. In just 30 minutes, you'll hear from industry leaders, each leading a very different company, about the metrics that matter to them and the strategies that underpin them.

Confronting the industry's most unconscious bias. In the UK, 'the working class' is an audience that is stereotyped and ignored by the marketing, communications and research community. From inclusion in the industry to thoughtful targeting, representation and messaging in the marketing we make – what can we learn from those who are already producing work that moves us forward, not back?

Watch back the live discussion and Q&A from expert thinkers and doers including Steven Lacey, Founder of The Outsiders, Asad Dhunna, Founder & CEO of The Unmistakables, Vicki Maguire, Chief Creative Officer at Havas London, Andy Nairn, Founding Partner of Lucky Generals, and moderated by Nicola Kemp, Editorial Director at Creative Brief.

Ipsos MORI outlines the top applicable insights from this year's Effie Awards UK winners. Watch a short presentation, followed by a discussion of the findings by smart leaders representing every corner of the industry. 

Lessons are presented by Eleanor Thornton-Firkin, Head of Creative Excellence at Ipsos MORI, who is then joined for a robust discussion with panelists Jo Arden, Chief Strategy Officer at Publicis●Poke, Saj Arshad, Chief Customer & Innovation Officer at Santander UK, and Dan Clays, CEO at Omnicom Media Group.

We know that business and brands have become the most trusted institutions of our time. Consumers look to brands to solve some of society’s most complex issues. Climate Change. Xenophobia. Systemic Racism. Income Inequality. The list goes on. Join Edelman’s U.S. Brand Chair, Smita Reddy for a conversation with Nicky Heckles, VP, Crown Royal at Diageo North America, and Tia Rains, VP, Customer Engagement at Ajinomoto - leaders from ttwo brands she admires, who recognize the responsibility laid at their feet and have leveraged their creative brand platform to just not reflect culture, but effectively change culture for the better.

In the new attention economy, content consumption is up, but ad avoidance has risen too. Consumers have more content choices that form their touchpoints with brands; however brand-driving actions are less efficient than ever. How can brands leverage different kinds of creative content alongside meaningful consumer data to break through?

Beth Lester Sidhu, Chief Brand & Communications Officer at Stagwell, leads a must-watch conversation with Zoë Fairbourn, Head of Brand Partnerships at Hello Sunshine, Jae Goodman, Founder & CEO at Observatory, and Alanna Strauss, Head of Creative - Brand Partnerships at Netflix, to answer the question.  The group discusses how different techniques can create more effective marketing solutions and, in particular, how entertainment and content divisions can be an effective solution for brand engagement.

Lots of data exists that shows that diversity in advertising is important. Beyond it simply being the right thing to do, audiences increasingly say they will reward brands who tackle inequality and offer a more authentic view of the world.  But there has always been an accompanying sense that this might be more talk than action, that consumers say one thing but don’t really vote that way with their hearts, minds and wallets.

New analysis of Effie U.S. entrants demonstrates a simple fact: campaigns that feature diverse characters are more likely to be judged as effective.  

TUMS was a 90-year-old antacid brand with a big dream: win over millennial consumers who weren't engaging with the category. Twitter's Sarah Personette chats with the team behind the Effie-winning work for "TUMS Makes the Super Bowl #TUMSworthy." 

​GSK Consumer Healthcare's Amy Sharon and Grey's Tilly Scullion share how they were able to acheive their objectives by tapping into cultural conversations about stress, claiming its own emoji and dominating Twitter on one of the noisiest days of the year.

Everyone admires a creative, cultural, even viral moment – but few have mastered optimizing cultural effectiveness and return on investment. How do brands create cultural impact to earn as much value as possible? 

To answer these questions and more, Khartoon Weiss, TikTok's Head of Global Agency & Accounts, is joined by Dr. Marcus Collins, Head of Planning at Wieden+Kennedy New York, and Yuri Lee, EVP, Group Account Director at Publicis | PSOne.

McDonald's needed to reassert its dominance as the iconic QSR, and create cultural heat around its brand. With a strong insight and big idea, they created a safe mass participation event during the pandemic with "The Travis Scott Meal."  Twitter's Sarah Personette is joined by McDonald's JJ Healan and Wieden+Kennedy New York's Tass Tsitsopoulos to discuss their Effie-winning work.

"The Travis Scott Meal" won a Silver and a Bronze Effie at the 2021 Effie Awards U.S. competition.

Advertising didn’t cause all of the world’s problems, but it certainly didn’t help. So, now it’s time to be part of the solution.

Join Rachel Lowenstein, Director of Inclusion Innovation at Mindshare, for an important conversation with Casey DePalma, Head of Public Relations, Influencer Marketing & Digital Engagement at Unilever, Jason Gaikowski, Global Head of Human Centered Design at VMLY&R, and Ashley Haynes-Gaspar, COO, Business Applications & Industry Clouds at Microsoft US.

There is a lot of talk in marketing about being in a post-advertising age, and yet we are witnessing the emergence of global players like Google and Facebook that are advertising platforms at their core. This panel will show that while individual advertising mediums are changing (TV is becoming digitized, OOH is merging with mobile), and advertising is becoming more cross-screen and cross-journey, the power of advertising remains strong and the ingredients for great advertising remain true.

The panel, moderated by Daryl Lee, Global CEO at IPG Mediabrands, will illustrate how our definitions of advertising and effectiveness need to be dynamic to keep up with the changing behaviors of our audiences, and how the Effie 4-step method can be used as a model for all marketers as a way to create and evaluate effective advertising.

It’s a challenge as old as the advertising industry. Brave work that separates from the pack is inherently viewed as risky. A level of risk-aversion can lead to safe creative which fits category conventions.

New analysis of Effie U.S. entrants proves that if you follow category conventions, you are much less likely to win an Effie. However, that’s not to say that all you have to do is break conventions and you will be effective.

With everyone talking about inclusive marketing, this session examines the true effectiveness of in-culture and in-language communications to grow consumers. This year, Univision commissioned a study with Nielsen measuring advertising performance among brands, and found that it literally pays to partner with diverse media networks because reaching consumers in the right environment results in higher returns.

In this panel discussion, moderated by Univision's EVP of Research, Insights & Analytics, Roberto Ruiz, hear from Elizabeth Campbell, Senior Director, Marketing at McDonald's, Lina Polimeni, Chief Media Officer at Lilly USA, and Tsvetan Tsvetkov, SVP, Nielsen Plan/Optimize at Nielsen, to garner insights and actionable learnings from powerful Effie-winning brands that recognize the power of connecting with U.S. Hispanics.

Tinder set out to re-energize the brand by re-energizing its iconic Swipe. In an interview with Twitter's Sarah Personette, Tinder's Kyle Miller and 72andSunny Los Angeles' Kelly Schoeffel discuss "Swipe Night," the Effie-winning, first-of-its-kind, live action, interactive miniseries where users made a series of choices that drove the story forward and impacted who they could match with in the app.

"Swipe Night" won 2 Gold Effies and was a Grand Effie contender at the 2021 Effie Awards U.S. competition.

Earlier this year, Effie UK and Ipsos MORI released a report, outlining key learnings from recent Effie Awards UK winners and finalists to help drive growth for brands and businesses.

In this video from the Ipsos Creative Corner series, Eleanor Thornton-Firkin (Head of Creative Excellence at Ipsos MORI), Karina Wilsher (Effie UK Council Chair and Global CEO of Anomaly), Sabina Usher (MullenLowe Group) and Ian Hampton (NHS England) discuss how to successfully bring an idea to life.

We’ve arrived at the final installment in our Minds Behind Effective Marketing series, presented by Valassis.  Throughout the series, we’ve had the opportunity to learn from the strategic and creative minds behind some of our favorite Effie-winning work.  We hope you’ve taken away some tangible insights and inspiration that you can bring brack to your teams and your work.

 

In this week’s edition of ‘Minds Behind Effective Marketing,’ Valassis’ Jason Kaplan speaks with the team at Mars Petcare and BBDO New York about their Effie-winning campaign for Pedigree Dentastix, ‘SelfieSTIX: Making it easier to get close-ups with your dog.’ 

Meet Angela Cameron, Global Portfolio Marketing Manager at Mars Petcare and Karin Santiago, VP, Strategy Director at BBDO New York, the creative and strategic minds behind the work, who shared a closer look at how the Dentastix SelfieSTIX came to be and how the effort contributed to the brand’s largest spike in sales since 2015.

Valassis’ Jason Kaplan is back for another edition of ‘Minds Behind Effective Marketing,’ featuring interviews with the creative and strategic minds behind some of your favorite Effie Award winners.  The series not only takes a closer look at what the teams behind the work did to achieve growth, but how they did it.  This week, we meet the team behind IKEA’s 'It’s Not A Catalog, Catalog' campaign that took home two Effies at the 2020 Effie Awards US competition, including a Gold Effie in the Commerce & Shopper: Brand Experience category.

 

The shopper journey is constantly evolving, with new ways to engage shoppers and guide the purchase process.  Our new video series, Minds Behind Effective Marketing, features interviews with the creative and strategic minds behind some of your favorite Commerce & Shopper Effie Award winners, brought to you by our partners at Valassis.  The series will not only take a look at what the teams behind the work did to achieve growth, but how they did it.

 

During Effie UK's 'Bounce Forward' Summit, we asked 'how do we want to be?'  The panel discussed practical ways to smash norms and stereotypes within out teams, our thinking and our output to ensure that we create work that moves our industry forward, not back.

In 2020, responding to changing circumstances took all our energy, resilience and imagination. It seemed impossible to think long-term. But recent months have been as transformational as they are challenging. With the global pandemic, as well as extraordinary political and social pressure, behaviours changed, perspectives broadened, and new strategies emerged.

In 2020, responding to changing circumstances took all our energy, resilience and imagination. It seemed impossible to think long-term. But recent months have been as transformational as they are challenging. With the global pandemic, as well as extraordinary political and social pressure, behaviours changed, perspectives broadened, and new strategies emerged.

Before we move into the next phase, what are the key lessons we want to hold onto?  Both in terms of how we create growth for our brands and businesses, and how we want to be and behave as we push for that growth?

In one sentence...

What is the best advice you can offer marketers today?

In one sentence...

How can marketers remain effective in challenging times?

In one sentence...What is the best advice you can offer marketers today?

Be useful to people, and solve problems instead of inventing new ones.

In one sentence...How do you define effective marketing? 

Effective marketing, to most of our clients, is that which helps them achieve their goals, regardless of what they are.

In one sentence...What is the best advice you can offer marketers today?

Focus your work on people; being human-centric allows us to create and offer authentic, more humane, and empathetic brands that generate value and engage with consumers’ deepest concerns and desires.

In one sentence...How do you define effective marketing?

Effective marketing is not only about selling right here right now, but about the synergy of media mix, creative and technology that can create long-term emotional connections between the customer and the brand.

In one sentence...How do you define effective marketing?

Effective marketing is the result of a strategy that evolves with the rhythm of consumers, making them feel that the brand understands them more than any other, and is therefore always relevant to them - in other words, personalizing the communication and the relationship to result in a higher conversion.