Gunn Media100 reveals the world’s best campaigns, agencies and brands for media excellence in advertising

GLOBAL – Gunn Report, the global index of excellence in advertising, has released the results of the 2018 Gunn Media 100, a global ranking of the world’s most awarded and applauded campaigns and companies based on their performance in media competitions around the world.

Gunn Report, now part of WARC, tracks the winners’ lists of close to 30 of the most important global, regional and national media awards shows to compile Gunn Media 100 – a list of the 100 best campaigns for creativity and innovation in media, along with the best-performing agencies, networks, holding companies, brands, advertisers and countries.

The highest-ranked campaign in the Gunn Media 100 is McDonald’s ‘Capacity Based McDelivery‘ by OMD Singapore. To maintain competitive advantages, McDonald’s promoted its delivery service McDelivery in Singapore in partnership with Google. By integrating McDonald’s first-party data with Google’s hyper-local targeting, they maximised media cost efficiency and managed consumer expectations of delivery time through tailored messages, mapping real-time restaurant data against paid search spends via a live API.

Stephen Li, CEO of OMD APAC, said: “To have our work for McDonald’s recognised as best of the best globally, is testament to our unwavering commitment and relentless focus on helping our clients’ leading brands continue to cut-through with data-driven creativity. This recognition motivates us to continue our drive in helping brands make better decisions, faster. The ‘Capacity Based McDelivery’ campaign is the perfect example of this in practice, leveraging real-time data to generate fresh growth for a market-leading brand in a highly competitive category. I could not be more proud of this achievement, and all the other great work coming out of OMD Singapore. It only inspires us to continue raising the bar even further still for our clients.”

In second place is ‘Hungerithm’ by MediaCom Melbourne / Clemenger BBDO, which saw confectionary brand Snickers partner with 7-Eleven stores in Australia to drive sales and increase category share. Snickers says the internet gets angry when it’s hungry. The brand launched ‘Hungerithm’, an algorithm that analysed 14,000 social posts a day and adjusted the price of the chocolate bar accordingly.The angrier the Internet got, the cheaper Snickers became.

Ranked third is ‘Reword’ for Headspace by Leo Burnett Melbourne / Starcom Melbourne. The Australian youth mental health foundation, successfully tackled cyber bullying by putting in place a social media rewording tool that analyses what users type and uses a red line to strike through abusive phrases.

Three themes have emerged from the world’s top campaigns for media excellence:

• Data is driving fresh media thinking. The top campaign is built around smart use of data. This is a recurring theme in the rankings, as brands look to harness multiple data sources to deliver competitive advantage.
• An event-led strategy helps brands stand out. As brands struggle to be heard in a fragmented media landscape, there is a growing focus on ‘events’ such as Super Bowl, US Presidential debates, and Olympics, that can draw a crowd and interest from the press.
• Partnerships are central to youth-focused media strategy. Partnerships with organisations or individuals that bring their own reach are now a key element of media strategy, particularly for brands targeting younger demographics.