Warc Honours Grand Prix and Special Award Winners

BBDO NY, MediaCom, Affinity, LB Melbourne, and more won Grand Prix at the Warc Media Awards. Special awards were also presented.

BBDO NY and MediaCom have won the Grand Prix in two categories at the Warc Media Awards for their work for Mars. Both agencies also picked up the Grand Prix for Effective Channel Integration with its Snickers Crisper campaign, which increased purchase intent and sales in the United States by leveraging a popular cultural trend and creating a new lexicon across multiple touchpoints.

Meanwhile, a campaign for M&Ms’ 75th anniversary took the Grand Prix for Effective Use of Partnerships as well as the Special Award for Collaboration with an Influencer. The initiative used digital partnerships to reinvent the brand’s iconic Candyman song, helping it to engage millennials and reverse a sales decline.

In the Best Use of Data category, Affinity won the Grand Prix and Special Award for Data-Driven Insight for its Narellan Pools campaign, Diving into Data. “They turned things around with a declining budget and were able to leverage data. That stood out for me,” said Sital Banerjee, Global Head of Media at Philips and judging panel Chair.

The Grand Prix for Effective Use of Tech was awarded to Leo Burnett Melbourne’s Reword push for the Australian mental health foundation, Headspace. The organisation helped to reduce online bullying by young internet users through the introduction of an online tool encouraging people to reconsider what they’ve written before posting.

The Grand Prix for Effective Use of Tech was awarded to the 'Reword' campaign for Headspace. — The Grand Prix for Effective Use of Tech was awarded to LBs Reword campaign for Headspace

“It is a brilliant piece of tech and the results speak for themselves,” said James Lewin, Head of Innovation at Mindshare APAC, and a judge for the category

Also in the Tech category, Old Spice Nature Adventure from Wieden+Kennedy, a gaming-led campaign in the US and Canada on live-streaming platform, Twitch, stole the Special Early Adopter Award. Kraft’s Serving What’s Trending campaign through Starcom took the Real Time Special Award.

UK insurance brand, Aviva, won two special awards. One was in the tech category for Programmatic with its Data Storytelling campaign and the other was the Consumer’s Friend award in the Best Use of Data category. The final special award winner in the data category for Attribution was KeyBank’s Hassle-Free Account, through Compass Point/McCann in the US.

The US Army and Independence Day won the Special Award in Partnerships & Sponsorships for Successful Sponsorship, while Under Armour’s Game Changer campaign, through Optimum Sports and Droga5, took the Special Award for Effective Native Content.

In the Effective Channel Integration category, LEGO’s Make LEGO the Star of Christmas campaign, through UM Australia, netted the Cross-Channel Special Award, while Project Akshar for SmartLife, through FP7/DXB, won the Low Budget Special Award. The final special award for paid, owned and earned media was awarded to Almap BBDO’s Antarctica Beer campaign, The World’s Best Social Network.

The winners of the Grands Prix and Special Awards were presented with their trophies at the Warc Media Awards event held in London, during which attendees had the opportunity to hear from jury members who shared their thoughts on the winning campaigns as well as from some of the winners about the stories behind their work.