Walkers wins Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix

CANNES: Walkers, PepsiCo's snack brand, won the Grand Prix at the inaugural Creative Effectiveness Lions, supported by Warc, at the Cannes Lions International Festival for Creativity.

Six campaigns picked up Creative Effectiveness Lions from a total of more than 140 submissions, most of which are now available to browse on warc.com.

Members of the jury picked the winners from a list exclusively composed of those campaigns that had been shortlisted for, or received, Lions in 2010.

The judging criteria to decide the winner was weighted 25% for strategy, 25% for the idea and 50% for results.

Jean-Marie Dru, head of TBWA Worldwide and chairman of the jury, added that a key criteria was for it to be "100% clear that the effectiveness came from the communication" rather than other strategies, such as discounting.

Walkers' Sandwich campaign, developed by AMV BBDO London, utilised celebrity branding and event marketing to encourage British shoppers to buy Walkers crisps with their lunchtime sandwiches.

The case - which was praised by the jury for its "crisp articulation" of the strategy - received 16 votes for the Grand Prix from the 17-member jury.

Standout business results from the campaign included a revenue increase of 26% for the brand.

Members of the jury also praised the winning case for "discounting the discount" - proving that the revenue boost was from the campaign and not from pricing strategy.

There's a McDonald's for everyone (Leo Burnett London), The Man Your Man Could Smell Like (W+K Portland for Old Spice), The Pacific (Colenso BBDO Auckland for TVNZ), W.A.L.S. (BBDO India for Gillette Mach3) and You're not you when you're hungry (BBDO New York for Snickers) joined Walkers among the winners.

Across this group, BBDO was top agency network with four of the six prizes, while the UK and the US were the two best-represented countries, with two winners each.

The fact many British agencies had been proving their effectiveness through entering the IPA Effectiveness Awards over many years was cited by the judges as a possible reason for their good performance.

The judges also confirmed that being a Lions winner from the previous year would remain a requirement for future entries to the Creative Effectiveness awards.

Similarly, announcing an overall winner – as is the case for as the IPA Effectiveness Awards and the Warc Prize for Ideas and Evidence – will continue to be the norm, rather than breaking the competition down into individual categories.

Data sourced from Cannes Lions; additional content by Warc staff, 27 June 2011

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