BUILDING BRANDS THAT MATTER: LESSONS FROM A DECADE OF THE WORLD’S MOST EFFECTIVE CAMPAIGNS

As WARC’s Rankings season comes to an end we’ve taken a deep dive into the state of sustainability campaigns over the last decade. A new report, Sustainability in the WARC Effective 100, in partnership with sustainability marketing expert Thomas Kolster, explores how sustainability work – whether defined as social or environmental – shows up in ten years of the Effective 100 Rankings (2014-24).

Topline findings

• Social sustainability issues like female empowerment, challenging bias and tackling poverty emerge as key themes.


• Environmental sustainability campaigns are less prominent across the ten-year analysis, although reducing waste is a key theme here.


• Toiletries and cosmetics (54) and retail (43) are the categories with the highest volume of sustainability campaigns.


• The region with the most sustainability case studies was North America (73), with Asia (64) and Europe (63) not far behind.


• Effective brands have a core issue, and support it over time; they don’t just highlight the issue, they also reinforce the customer benefit; and many use creativity to find novel solutions.

What brands have done

• Reward the right behaviour. Rewarding consumers for positive behaviour change is a tried and tested strategy. For example, Tesco Malaysia gave a discount when customers reused their plastic bags.


• Empower people. Empowering people could come in the form of helping small business owners grow, per American Express, or it could mean empowering impoverished communities to grow their own food, per Knorr.


• Rethink problems. While some saw imperfect produce, French supermarket Intermarché saw an opportunity. Imperfect-shaped produce became a way to combat food waste, driving change across the category.


• Get personal. Brands like Dove tapped emotive topics like women’s self-esteem, SK-II addressed pressures on young women in China, while Bodyform/Libresse broke down social stigmas.


• Create a new category. As the climate crisis plays out on news feeds, new, climate-friendly categories are emerging. Back Market created a new category and became the leading online seller of refurbished smartphones in France.

Effectiveness 2.0

Effectiveness 2.0 is a new framework marketers can use to build brands that matter. The Effectiveness 2.0 model shifts from a one-dimensional focus on commercial impact to a three-dimensional holistic approach across commercial, social, and environmental impacts.

“Many of this decade’s most groundbreaking campaigns succeed not by exploiting people’s fleeting desires, but by boldly addressing their deeper, more profound human needs. Social sustainability and environmental sustainability campaigns cut through the noise because they dare to address what truly matters to people”

add Thomas Kolster, founder of Goodvertising.

Sustainability in the WARC Effective 100 highlights effective sustainability campaigns from Asia, North America and Europe as well as from other markets around the world, including China, Egypt and Peru. WARC members can read the report in full here.

Source: warc.com