Advertising best practice, evidence and insights

Article • WARC Best Practice, September 2020

This article explores the current sources informing how brands and agencies can use cultural insight, the ideas, customs and behaviour of particular people.

What we know about bricolage and semiotics

Article • WARC Best Practice, September 2020

Summarises the insights from key papers on the topic of bricolage (how different materials are used in the creative process of understanding) and semiotics (the study of signs and symbols) – techniques used by qualitative researchers to deliver cultural insight.

Imagine a world where news doesn’t exist

Article • Denise Turner, WARC Exclusive, October, 2020

Research by Newsworks into the impact of news media on individual consumers and society.

Why brands need to put Black Lives Matter in context

News • 14/10/2020

As brands increasingly recognise they need to acknowledge the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, understanding its context – and how other brands have both succeeded and failed in addressing it – is a crucial first step.

Elements of a Successful Purpose Campaign

Article • ARF - Knowledge at Hand, April 2020

Discusses the findings of ‘Cracking brand purpose’, a joint report by the ARF and Kantar on the science of effective brand-purpose campaigns.

How uniting with a common purpose helped L’Oréal Paris UK and The Prince’s Trust unlock the value of young people’s self-worth

Case Study • Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, Entrant, IPA Effectiveness Awards, 2020

L'Oréal Paris UK, a beauty brand, and The Prince's Trust, a non-profit organisation, launched a partnership to transform the lives of almost 10,000 disadvantaged young people in the UK.

Baileys: From forgotten icon to global treat

Case Study • Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, Silver, IPA Effectiveness Awards, 2020

Liqueur brand Baileys reversed its decline in sales with its global campaign Don't Mind if I Baileys.

For more O in your life: How O2 got back to growth in Germany

Case Study • Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, Entrant, IPA Effectiveness Awards, 2020

O2, a telecommunications brand, returned to growth in Germany after years of customer losses by creating a series of ads that featured entertaining content to make consumers go "O!".

Building diverse teams is an investment in the present – and the culturally complex future

Article • Carol Watson, WARC Exclusive, October 2020

Examines how to build teams that reflect diversity, and why they are important.

The three social media waves of the Black Lives Matter movement – and how they impact marketing in this moment

Article • Husani Oakley, WARC Exclusive, October 2020

The Black Lives Matter movement is actually comprised of three waves, which were formed not just by incidents of violence – and murder – against Black people, but also by how social media helped propagate awareness of BLM; they are the Martin Wave, the Brown Wave and the Floyd Wave.

Marketing to Black consumers in the coming majority-minority US

Article • Monique Nelson, WARC Best Practice, October 2020

Examines how shifting demographics in the US are moving it toward a majority-minority country, and how marketers should adapt.

Diageo portfolio: Marketing Catalyst – Creating a culture of marketing effectiveness

Case Study • Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, Gold, Best Use of Data and Best New Learning, IPA Effectiveness Awards, 2020

Diageo, an alcoholic drinks brand, created a web-based tool to help marketers decide how to better spend their money to deliver more gross profit from its marketing globally.

Libresse: A messy business

Case Study • Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, Entrant, IPA Effectiveness Awards, 2020

Libresse, a brand of feminine hygiene products, launched its Live Fearless narrative in the UK through which it created a series of campaigns around normalising periods, both in culture and the media.

Results & a half: How generosity paid off for Cadbury

Case Study • Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, Entrant, IPA Effectiveness Awards, 2020

Cadbury, a confectionary company, relaunched its positioning with the brand line There’s a Glass and a Half in Everyone to show that Cadbury is at the heart of people and their generosity to win back brand salience in the UK.

The Campaign Against Living Miserably: Breaking the silence – How an image, not an ad, transformed the way the UK treats male suicide

Case Study • Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, Bronze, IPA Effectiveness Awards, 2020

The Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), a charity, created a striking public installation in the UK to increase awareness of male suicide and suicide prevention.

L'Oréal Paris: No.1 and always worth it

Case Study • Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, Entrant, IPA Effectiveness Awards, 2020

L'Oréal Paris, a cosmetics company, launched its Because You're Worth It slogan across a decade's worth of ads in the UK to improve brand saliency among women in a period of market decline.

Courageous Conversation Global Foundation (CCGF): Not A Gun

Case Study • ARF Ogilvy Awards, Grand Ogilvy, 2020

Courageous Conversation Global Foundation (CCGF), a non-profit organisation, highlighted the implicit racial biases among police officers in the US by launching a series of creatives that likened an innocent candy bar to a gun.

Why McDonald’s is listening differently

Article • Brian Carruthers, Event Reports, DMEXCO @home, September 2020

This article explores some of the steps and techniques that McDonald's and its partners are pursuing in order to understand all groups of consumers.

The future of marketing to womxn

Article • Research on WARC, September 2020

Brings together fresh new qualitative research, quantitative data and A/B testing from communities to better understand what Gen Z womxn want from to see from brands.

Why brands need a different approach to online communities

News • 18/09/2020

Emerging platforms are creating new dynamics in the way people interact with and influence each other, and consume and distribute content, consequently impacting how brands should approach online communities.

Harpic: Overcoming India's Toilet Divide

Case Study • Jitender Dabas, Kush Anand, WARC Prize for Asian Strategy, Silver, 2020

Toilet-cleaner brand Harpic used a multi-channel campaign to encourage behaviour change and unlock demand for the brand in rural India.

Fortis Hospitals: Honor the Donor

Case Study • Saumya Tyagi, Ankit Singh, WARC Prize for Asian Strategy, Silver, 2020

Fortis, the chain of hospitals, launched the first ever organ donor symbol to tackle the cultural taboo against organ donation in India.

Pantene: Breakup Salon

Case Study • Owen Smith, WARC Prize for Asian Strategy, Silver, 2020

Hair care brand Pantene leveraged China's Singles' Day shopping event to get consumers' attention with their Breakup Salon brand experience.

The new shape of online communities

Article • Florencia Lujani, WARC Exclusive, September 2020

The way people interact and influence each other online, and the way they consume and distribute content, are bringing new challenges for brands interested in creating communities with business impact.

PLAY NZ: How to gamify a country and playfully disrupt tourism marketing

Article • Matthew Moran, WARC Exclusive, September 2020

TBWA’s Matthew Moran offers a walkthrough of Tourism New Zealand’s PLAY NZ campaign and explores how tourism marketing can embrace new ways of storytelling.

Cultural insight