LONDON: A Facebook-led campaign developed by AMVBBDO for Doritos has been named the world's best social strategy, as it took the Grand Prix at the inaugural Warc Prize for Social Strategy.

Authored by Tom White, the paper described how snack food brand Doritos had sent a Mariachi band around the UK playing 1980s hits to liven up parties. The strategy opened up a new audience to the brand, without alienating its core youth market.

In addition to the $5,000 Grand Prix, the Mariachi paper also picked up a $1,000 Special Award for best use of analytics. And a separate paper from AMVBBDO, on the '#Youdrive' campaign for Mercedes-Benz, won a Special Award for best channel strategy.

As well as the two campaigns from AMVBBDO, four other papers won cash prizes: the Evian 'Baby&Me' campaign from BETC Paris won a $1,000 Special Award for the best long-term idea; Mizuno Running's US campaign 'The Mezamashii Run Project' won the $1,000 Special Award for the best social business idea; and the $1,000 Special Award for the best low-budget entry was split between a New Zealand animal-rights campaign for Paw Justice, and an anti-smoking effort from Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.

In addition, a total of five Gold Medals, four Silver and eight Bronze were awarded by a panel of senior advertisers and agency-side strategy experts.

The panel was led by Prize Chairman Pete Blackshaw, Global Head of Digital and Social Media at Nestlé, who declared himself "really impressed with both the quantity and the quality of entries".

"The winner really stood out because it was fundamentally social by design and was well executed," he said. "It struck a good balance between appealing to parents and to teenage boys."

Blackshaw was further encouraged by the efforts to show the business impact of social strategy. "As an industry we have a lot more to learn in this area," he noted. "All of us in our companies are still trying to figure out norms and benchmarks in terms of what drives impact."

Further details on the Prize, including the full list of winners and interviews with some of the judges, can be found at www.warc.com/socialprize.

Data sourced from Warc