Campaigns for Volkswagen in North America, Harpic in India and Airbnb in Australia are among the 21 that have been shortlisted for the Effective Use of Brand Purpose category in the 2020 WARC Awards.
The panel of 17 judges, chaired by Ivan Pollard, Senior Vice President, Global Chief Marketing Officer, General Mills, has chosen campaigns from around the world; in addition to the above, there are papers from Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, UAE and the UK.
WARC subscribers can read all the shortlisted entries here.
The category recognises marketing initiatives that have successfully embraced a brand purpose and achieved commercial success as well as a benefit for a wider community. In the case of auto brand Volkswagen that included a mea culpa as it acknowledged its past faults – Dieselgate – and highlighted its pledge to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
With Drive Bigger, it delivered a multi-channel campaign in the US that spanned every touchpoint of the brand to rebuild credibility. The approach signalled changes on the path of the brand's future, atoning for the mistakes of the past and delivering a 33% increase in consumer trust.
Toilet-cleaner brand Harpic discovered that, given its negative associations with dirt, people in rural India avoid using the word ‘toilet’ altogether. So it set out to remove the shame associated with it communicate a sense of pride in having a clean toilet. Rural penetration exceeded targets to reach a historic high, adding 10.8m new households to Harpic's customer base.
In Australia, Airbnb successfully lifted awareness and positive sentiment with a campaign that sought to reawaken interest in domestic tourism. Having identified the country pub as a gathering point for struggling rural communities it offered a grant to revitalise six such establishments, using a combination of public policy, paid media, earned media and owned channels in a three-stage strategy.
Among agencies, five of the seven Middle East & North Africa papers come from FP7 McCann offices; that region also leads in terms of overall contribution, closely followed by South East Asia with five.
The WARC Awards has a $40,000 prize fund split equally across its four categories. Shortlists for the remaining categories will be announced over the next two weeks and the winners will be announced in late May.
Sourced from WARC
