GLOBAL: An Australian campaign for Flordis-owned cough medicine Prospan has won the Grand Prix in the Best Use of Data category in the 2017 WARC Media Awards, while Disney and McDonald’s picked up Golds for campaigns in the UK and Spain.

The Best Use of Data category recognises the role of data in an effective communications strategy. In addition to the Grand Prix, three Golds, two Silvers and three Bronzes were awarded alongside three Special Awards. Full details of the winners can be found on the Awards website.

In addition to winning the Grand Prix, the Don't Ignore a Cough campaign from Affinity for Prospan also picked up the Data-Driven Insight Award, for a campaign where data helped to identify the right audience at scale.

Prospan leveraged customer insights and big data to build a predictive algorithm that would alert concerned mums when the chance of their children getting a cold was the highest.

By successfully aligning Prospan with maternal instinct, the campaign achieved a 27% increase in sales, in a category which shrank by -8.5% during the same period.

Private health insurer DKV Spain won a Gold for an OMD-created customer-centric campaign, Irse de madre, aimed at new parents, which produced an 8.4% growth in sales.

Another Gold went to McDonald’s Spain for another OMD campaign which involved an app redesign to place it at the centre of the chain’s loyalty programme and offer personalised customer experiences. Not only did app downloads more than double, app users spent 20% more than the average customer.

The last Gold was won by a campaign by OMD UK and OMD EMEA for the latest film in the Star Wars franchise that delivered the biggest movie release of 2016 and beat Disney's box office targets. This identified four key audience segments and targeted them using data gleaned from Rogue One trailer views on YouTube.

The Best Real-Time Award, for the best example of a campaign planned in real-time, went to MyTaxi, the app for London’s black cabs. Developed by Kinetic UK and the7stars, this digital OOH campaign turned Uber's hated price-surging feature to their advantage.

The Attribution Award, for the best example of a channel attribution model, went to US restaurant Noodles & Company. This used a data-driven approach created by IMM to both optimise and prove incremental sales.

“This year’s winners truly demonstrate both the creativity and variety in how brands are using data today,” said Nicole Kane, Director, Global Media | McDonald’s Corporation and chair of the jury.

“The type of data being utilised ranged from first party, to publicly accessible, to real-time data. There are strong examples across insights, activation, and measurement: from uncovering an emotional, consumer insight to large brands using data to drive scale to those who are pushing new thinking in attribution.”

Readers can register for Lessons from the WARC Media Awards, a WARC event taking place on February 6, where they can hear some of the category judges, including Sorin Patilinet, Global Center of Expertise for Media at Mars and Paula Fernandez, Global Head of Data Tools & Analytics at Kinetic Worldwide, and Nancy Rowe, Digital Strategy and Insight Lead at SapientRazorfish, reflect on the trends and themes they have observed.

Sourced from WARC