MEDIA RELEASE: April 15 2021: Throughout 2020, Kantar tested more than 10,000 ads for clients around the world and today reveal those that performed most effectively, announcing the winners of Kantar’s Creative Effectiveness Awards, which stand out for being judged by consumers. Included in the top 20 is eBay Australia’s The Fast and the Furious.
2020’s most creative and effective ads

Across the year and 10,000+ adverts analysed using Link, Kantar’s validated ad testing solution; five habits from the most effective advertisers were identified.
- Be distinctive
Create the ability to be noticed and remembered in a world where there’s a profusion of ads. Your ad is not just competing in its category. It is competing for attention against the world. Stand out from the category as a minimum, and ideally from any other advertising.
- Brand intrinsically
Make sure that the attention won by the ad is at the service of the brand. Get your branding cues right. A surprising number of companies forget this basic rule.
- Be meaningfully different
To grow market share or defend premium pricing you need to fulfil consumers’ functional, emotional and social needs in the category AND illustrate your uniqueness compared to the competition.
- Trigger an emotional response
Making the viewer feel something wins engagement for the ad, bypassing the natural tendency to screen out advertising. It also has positive effects on the brand’s emotional associations.
- Talk with your consumer
Successful marketers know they can get ‘too close’ to their creative journey and lose perspective, so they listen to viewer feedback during creative development.
Daren Poole, Global leader of Kantar’s Creative Domain, says “At Kantar, we love great creative content, and we love it even more when that creativity is harnessed to deliver against brand and marketing objectives. Our winners are from a diverse range of products and categories, and, as our report shows, use many different tactics in their creativity. The commonality they share is a commitment to creative excellence and a focus on ensuring their work performs exactly as intended.”
Kantar’s global COVID-19 Barometer research showed people wanted advertising to continue during the pandemic, as it provided a sense of normality at a time of 24-hour COVID news cycles. Additional global research showed that, for the most part, people were processing content in the same way as they did before. Those advertisers that held their resolve and invested in their brand during the creative investment downturn saw their bravery rewarded.
Website: Kantar