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Time of India
2 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
How Marcel plans to excel in the age of AI
When Marcel unveiled "WoMen's Football", a provocative campaign for telecom giant Orange that swapped male player highlights with female athlete performances mid-match, it wasn't merely an advertising stunt—it was a cultural wake-up call. Ranked number one in WARC's Creative 100 for 2025, this daring initiative wasn't about chasing trends but rather shaping them. Behind such bold ideas stands Youri Guerassimov , CEO of Marcel, whose approach combines creative bravery with meticulous strategic insight. Under Guerassimov's stewardship, Marcel has emerged as an influential voice among global creative agencies, balancing artistry and commerce with remarkable finesse. From tackling e-waste with Back Market's irreverent " Hack Market " campaign to reshaping gender perceptions through provocative storytelling, the Paris-based agency has accumulated an enviable collection of accolades from Cannes Lions, D&AD, and the Effies. In this edition of Economic Times Brand Equity's Digital Cover , Guerassimov discusses how authenticity forms the core of impactful advertising, the unexpected realities of transitioning from creative director to CEO, and why he believes artificial intelligence is not a threat, but rather a transformative tool reshaping the future of creativity. Edited Excerpts: How do you ensure that authenticity remains at the core of what you do? At the heart of what we do at our agency is a commitment to staying true to the brand, and of course, to the people and our target audience. It's a strategic approach from the very beginning—even before we start the creative process. We have a very strong strategic department that works deeply on the brands and briefs. We gain a strong understanding of the brand, the target, and what we are supposed to do. At the same time, we stay close to pop culture and try our best to remain connected to what people are talking about in India and what is happening around us. I would like to say 'every time', but most of the time, we are true to people and to what is happening, which makes our advertisements more efficient and powerful. Where does this inspiration to be true and real come from? It's part of a technical approach, which is why we talk about strategies. People are digging to see, to find, to understand the technical side. At the same time, the creative approach begins with being curious, curious in every possible way. You always have to be aware of what's happening in the country and in the world, so you become like a library of what people's lives are like. You take time to observe what people think, what they do, and that always helps you stay accurate in your work. You try your best to achieve that. You talked about bold ideas, how to be brave, then there's a client objective as well, their business goals. How do you balance the two? On one side you wish to be creative and on the other side you also want to deliver to the goals that the client has? We are not working in show-business; we are working in advertising. In a way, it sits between arts and commerce. Everyone would say it's more commerce than arts, but we use art to serve commerce. So, we should be aligned with the client. If the client has a problem, like making people aware of their latest project, we need to solve that problem with a creative approach. Both are linked. Boldness alone doesn't make sense; we need to use that boldness, we need to use creativity to help our client, our brand, achieve something. It's part of our job, part of our experience, and part of our skills to get it right. Sometimes you try to be bold and it doesn't succeed, or it isn't accurate, and that's also part of the agency's experience. And of course, it's the role of the creative director, who is supposed to be the one responsible for that, the ideas must be accurate for the client and the brief. Boldness or being brave isn't being foolish. When I was CCO, if we had to go on a trip to Paris, we'd take business class tickets. It would cost, say, 1,000 euros. Now, as CEO, I do the opposite. I say let's take economy class, because it's only a one-hour trip and it will cost 300 instead of 1,000 eurosYouri Guerassimov From a creative director to a CEO, you are balancing between a storyboard and an Excel sheet. Has it changed your thought process? Did you start differently when you became a CEO? The answer is yes. I think most people would love to hear 'no', but yes, it changed a lot of things, and maybe it's for the best. It's always a question of balance, of how to frame the right balance. Hopefully, the idea I'm working to achieve at the top of the agency is also about finding the right compromise. That's why you need someone who is very creative, very passionate, and who understands how an agency works, how a business works, so you can find exactly the right balance. You're always trying, always in the process. It's not easy or obvious. Every day, I try to find the right balance between creativity, investment, and talent in the product, and at the same time make it profitable, so the agency can continue to exist and continue to earn money. Because we all need money to make it work, to bring in more people with diverse skills. Many people don't accept the fact that they changed after being CEO but you did that… can you give an example - what changed? Let me give you an example. When I was CCO, if we had to go on a trip to Paris, we'd take business class tickets. It would cost, say, 1,000 euros. Now, as CEO, I do the opposite. I say let's take economy class, because it's only a one-hour trip and it will cost 300 instead of 1,000 and put more entries from the 700 we saved. That's the difference. It's not the same mindset anymore. You have to find the right balance and make the right choice, and that's exactly what's happening. I understand that the money is the same, whether you spend it on a plane ticket, an event entry, or a party, it's still the same money. So, it's always about making choices. It's like an art director who doesn't use Photoshop - today, that person wouldn't really be considered an art director in advertising. It will probably be the same for AI in a few yearsYouri Guerassimov It's no longer just about awareness, it's also about driving loyalty and advocacy after conversion. How do you see the client's expectations changing, and how are you adapting to these emerging expectations? I think we were ready for that for years. In a way, I was expecting that clients would change their mindset, because I believe advertising and communication today are a matter of balance. A brand should have a long-term vision, while also doing something fresh, sometimes very business-oriented, sometimes a big call to action. You should use the full range of what we can offer as advertisers, for the brand, because that's what works and what people expect too. What is Creativity in the age of AI vs what it was before? Through your vantage point… It's a trendy question, and I have a partial answer. I think we are only at the beginning of AI - we're just discovering it, and we're all trying to see how it can change the way we work and improve the quality of our output. We're very invested in AI, and I believe the agency is really on the edge, trying to move forward with it. It's already changing how we work. Presentations are now really beautiful, there's a big improvement in timing, and we're able to work more quickly, which is great. The craft has become much better. We also use ChatGPT and similar tools to make writing easier or to get fresh perspectives. Some wise people on the internet say that AI won't replace creatives, it's the creatives who use AI that will replace agencies that don't. We're ready for that. We just need to embrace it and make the most of it. Everything is moving fast, but we have to stay aware and always know what's happening. Maybe the biggest revolution is just around the corner. So, if a 20-year-old comes to you asking for an internship of 6 months to prove he is good, will you ask him whether he knows how to do AI prompts? What's hiring like in the age of AI? No, the most important thing is the idea. So when I hire someone, I need them to bring great ideas, the feeling, the passion, the understanding-to make me feel confident that this person will do great work. Of course, I'll then ask what kind of tools they use, and AI is everywhere now. ChatGPT is a great tool to refresh the mind and get quicker answers, so yes, I'll definitely ask, but it's not mandatory for me. I'm sure in a few years it will become normal. It's like an art director who doesn't use Photoshop - today, that person wouldn't really be considered an art director in advertising. It will probably be the same for AI in a few years. Where do you see the first impact of AI coming in, is it in design or in writing? Like using ChatGPT everyone seems to be a writer now? Maybe because I am a former art director, I would say the biggest difference is in the craft. The transformation is really amazing. ChatGPT is clearly a useful writing tool that helps our copywriters, but the change there is less obvious. In the art direction path, it's just crazy. I've seen some good creatives who were not really strong art directors suddenly become the ones delivering beautifully crafted images. That feels like magic, because developing that level of skill used to take seven to ten years. Now the machine can do it. If you have the right vision in your head, the machine will help you bring it to life in the proper way. You no longer need to be extremely technical, but you still need an art direction background, or at least good taste. You must know in your mind what the result should look like, because that is still part of the art director's job. What used to take three or four days now takes three hours. For me, that is the crazy part. It's just magic. Now what if a client starts thinking why should I give you 48 hours of time, it's the era of AI… give it to me in 15 mins, 1 hour or 2 hours? I get your point. Depending on the mockup, it can be very different. You can create something very beautiful very quickly, but getting exactly what you want can take a lot of time, really a lot of time. You need the right expression, the right positioning. We have also noticed that sometimes AI just does not understand certain parts of the mockup. Sometimes we make drawings or even 3D models to help AI understand precisely what we want, creating situations where the AI has no choice but to use exactly what we have given it. What is it that you want to keep as Marcel's legacy, when people look at it in a decade, what do you think Marcel's legacy should be? It's a difficult question. I hope people will think that we created great ideas and made people love our brands and clients. I believe that is the legacy. We do everything across all kinds of media, and we would love for people to recognise that it is not just about how we do it, but that we do everything possible to deliver great ideas for our clients.
Campaign ME
22-05-2025
- Business
- Campaign ME
What Middle East luxury consumers really want
While global macroeconomic headwinds are cooling demand for luxury in many markets, the Middle East is moving in the opposite direction – accelerating, evolving and redefining what luxury means on its own terms. Cities like Dubai and Riyadh are fast becoming style capitals, powered by a young, affluent population, ambitious national development programs like Saudi Vision 2030, and a surge in both local spending and inbound tourism. Add to that the region's growing investments in infrastructure, culture and creative industries, and the result is a potent mix of momentum and transformation. Industry forecasts reflect this excitement too, with the region's luxury sector expected to multiply in value by 2030. To thrive in this fast-moving market, luxury brands need to understand four key shifts: Youth-driven growth and the demographic dividend A significant segment of the Middle East's population is under 30, and their preferences are redefining the future of luxury fashion in the region. These younger consumers gravitate toward brands that successfully merge global style with cultural relevance. They value craftsmanship and storytelling, gravitating toward designs that honour heritage through fabric, silhouette and symbolism. In Saudi Arabia, another monumental transformation is women rapidly narrowing the economic gap, with their increasing purchasing power boosting demand for a diverse range of fashion products. These demographic nuances in the region are pushing luxury brands to rethink their approach, focusing less on conspicuous consumption and more on creating meaningful connections and experiences. Experiential and ultra-personalised retail Luxury in the Middle East is as much about experience as it is about exclusivity. Whether through private lounges, concierge-style service, or capsule collections designed for the region, brands are doubling down on personalisation. While e-commerce continues to expand, offline retail remains essential. As WARC's 'MENA's Anatomy of Effectiveness' notes, physical touchpoints can significantly enhance digital performance. The future is omnichannel – not just in logistics, but in storytelling, loyalty and brand-building. Even digitally native DTC brands are realising that to compete in this region, you have to show up offline too. The rise of regional designers and local identity Yes, renowned European luxury houses like Hermes, Chanel, LVMH remain popular in the region as status symbols. But consumers expect such international players to provide exclusive, region-specific merchandise, personalised VIP services and exclusive in-store events and experiences that match global standards but also reflect local tastes and sensibilities. Simultaneously, regional designers are gaining visibility by integrating traditional craftsmanship and sustainable practices, appealing especially to younger buyers eager to support homegrown talent. Regional fashion weeks and events are spotlighting homegrown talent, further cementing the region's influence on global luxury narratives. There is particularly more interest among younger Gen Z and millennial customers, who are unafraid and more open to experimenting with lesser-known brands, including local brands. If the storytelling and aesthetic resonate, brand loyalty follows – regardless of how globally recognised the name is. My personal favourite trend: The transformative power of AI in luxury Just like many other sectors, AI is fundamentally reshaping the luxury fashion customer experience across the Middle East, contributing to making it more personalised, efficient and immersive than ever before. From virtual shopping lounges to real-time personalisation, AI is redefining how luxury feels – both online and in-store. It's enabling brands to emphasise craftsmanship and exclusivity through immersive experiences that go beyond the product. This hyper-personalisation is becoming the new standard in luxury, as discerning Middle Eastern shoppers increasingly expect brands to understand and anticipate their unique tastes and needs. Redefining the soul of luxury As I look at the shifting sands of the global luxury landscape, one thing is clear: the world's new benchmarks for exclusivity and customer experience are being set here in the region where heritage collides with innovation and tradition dances with modernity. But are luxury brands truly paying attention? Or are they still stuck in a Eurocentric echo chamber, missing the nuanced desires of a sophisticated, diverse audience that is rewriting the rules of what it means to be 'exclusive'? The future of luxury fashion, I believe, will belong to those who dare to look beyond the obvious. Those who understand that true luxury is not just about scarcity, but about meaningful, authentic relationships with an audience that demands more than just a product. Here's the real question: Are brands listening closely enough to the Middle East consumer? Do they really know what drives their preferences? Do they grasp how this audience views luxury-not just as a status symbol, but as a reflection of identity, culture and aspiration? And, perhaps most importantly, do they know where these consumers are shopping, both online and offline? Market insights, category trends and consumer behaviour data are not just boxes to tick, they are the lifeblood of any brand hoping to thrive in this new era. The brands that will win are those that invest the time to understand the subtle distinctions: the interplay of tradition and modernity, the hunger for innovation and the deep respect for heritage that defines the Middle East luxury consumer. So, I ask again: Are we ready to redefine luxury, not just for the region, but for the world? Or will we let this moment slip by, clinging to outdated notions while the future passes us by? The answer, I suspect, will determine not just who leads the market, but who truly understands the soul of luxury in the years to come. By Bipul Markan, Head of Research & Insights at Assembly MENA
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Brands' appetite wanes for creative risk-taking, per Lions research
This story was originally published on Marketing Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Marketing Dive newsletter. Dive Brief: Only 13% of brand marketers and creatives view their companies as 'risk-friendly' when it comes to creativity, while 29% are highly risk averse, according to the 2025 State of Creativity report from Lions, which produces the annual Cannes Lions creativity festival. The report, now in its fifth year, surveys more than 1,000 marketers and creatives around the world and includes qualitative information from one-on-one industry leaders. More than half of respondents (51%) said their customer insights are too weak to develop bold creative, and 57% said they struggle to react quickly to cultural moments. The survey also revealed that brands are increasingly focusing on short-term marketing activities, rather than long-term brand building. In the 2025 survey, nearly two-thirds (63%) of respondents said their brands were focusing on such tactics, up from 53% in 2023. Dive Insight: Brand and agency executives are becoming more risk-averse when it comes to marketing creative, which could negatively impact growth, according to the largest creativity festival. Outside data cited in the report backs up the assertion that stronger creativity leads to better business results. Brands that take creative risks generate four times higher profit margins than those that don't, per WARC and Kantar. Additionally, brands with an appetite for creative risk are 33% more likely to see long-term revenue growth, according to Deloitte. The aversion to 'creative risk-taking,' defined by the survey as 'bold, unconventional ideas that challenge norms and engage audiences in unexpected ways,' boils down to issues marketers face like poor insights and an inability to respond to cultural moments quickly, per the report. With regard to insights, 51% of respondents said their ability to develop high-quality insights was poor or very poor. Conversely, only 13% said their ability was very good or excellent. The main barriers to developing quality insights were a lack of understanding and clarity as to what makes a good insight, not enough priority on insight development and insufficient time allocated to insight exploration. The report noted that strong agency-brand relationships and more diverse teams and methods yielded better, more actionable insights. Additionally, AI use also increased efficiency and reduced bias. A lack of confidence in consumer insights is also leading to brands' inability to respond to cultural moments. According to the report, 57% of brands struggle to react quickly when something happens, and only 12% rate their ability to do so as 'excellent.' Other challenges include too many layers in the approval process and limited resources and investment. Recommendations include streamlining internal processes and shaping culture rather than chasing it.
WIRED
02-05-2025
- Politics
- WIRED
Trump Wants to Erase Black History. These Digital Archivists Are Racing to Save It
May 2, 2025 7:00 AM Donald Trump's executive orders are attacking everything from the Smithsonian to Black sports history, but grassroots organizers are launching a resistance. An exhibit of the Black Power movement at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, April 4, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Photograph:Earlier this week, at the Auburn Avenue Research Library in Atlanta, a couple dozen fellows commenced a year-long project designed to put the mission of preserving Black history back in the hands of community members. 'We want to open up a conversation asking, 'What does it look like for a community of Black people to come together and decide what to collect?'' says Makiba Foster, cofounder of the Web Archiving School (WARC), a new training program that teaches practitioners methods of digital preservation built around an 'ethic of care.' 'We don't want to depend on institutions for folks to have these kinds of skills. They will backtrack on us when it's beneficial to them.' WARC could not have arrived at a more urgent moment. Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has targeted diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) aggressively and vowed to fight 'anti-white' racism. He first signed an executive order to end 'radical and wasteful' diverse hiring practices in federal agencies, then followed that with another aimed squarely at DEI programs in the private sector. But it didn't stop there. In March, Trump signed an executive order accusing the Smithsonian Institution of having 'come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.' Taken together, the proclamations are part of the administration's broader attempt to sanitize so-called 'woke ideology' from the annals of American life and 'forge a society that is color-blind and merit based.' But not everyone views it that way. 'There is an attempt at dehumanization happening,' Bergis Jules, an archivist and WARC cofounder says. 'The first act of taking away someone's humanity is denying the fact that you have a history. And if you're trying to take that away, then you don't believe those people need to exist.' WARC's inaugural class—22 fellows whose backgrounds span everything from research and library science to visual and audio art—are training to become the next generation of Black 'memory workers' with the right tools to digitally preserve the histories that are important to them. As many agencies, public and private, have quickly fallen in line with Trump's orders, Foster says she's not going to rely on legacy institutions to do that important work. 'When it's time to make a statement around DEI, and it's a bandwagon thing, it's cool. But when the rubber meets the road and someone's telling you can't do this, people quickly turn,' she says. WARC is the flagship program of the Archiving the Black Web collective that Foster and Jules started in 2019, inspired in part by their work documenting the Black Lives Matter movement. Their efforts come as scholars are sounding the alarm over Trump's latest war on museums—and history itself. 'In this naive effort to control how the past is recorded and interpreted, the Trump administration has stepped into a minefield,' David Blight, president of the Organization of American Historians, wrote in The New York Times. In March, a biography about baseball hall-of-famer Jackie Robinson was removed from the Nimitz Library in the US Naval Academy, along with 400 books tied to DEI. The following month, the National Park Service removed references to Harriet Tubman's role in fighting against enslavement on a webpage; that information has since been restored. In the executive order targeting the Smithsonian network of museums, Trump calls out, 'The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture,' an exhibit at the American Art Museum, as part of a so-called coordinated effort to 'portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.' Meredith D. Clark, a professor of race and political communication at UNC-Chapel Hill, tells WIRED that museums are akin to 'public trusts,' and the Trump administration's assault on them is an attempt to dictate who does and doesn't belong. 'One of the things that power needs to do in order to expand and conquer is to convince people that there is no hope in resistance. And a tool for doing that is to destroy heritage,' says Clark, who wrote We Tried to Tell Y'all: Black Twitter and the Rise of Digital Counternarratives. 'You can see those patterns everywhere, from the Holocaust and the burning of books to, in more recent years, the destruction of historical reservoirs and artifacts in Syria.' Even though they can be a cesspool of racism and bigotry, social media platforms, from X to TikTok, are now de facto outlets for resistance as digital media has become the primary mode of communication. As facts get easier to manipulate thanks to AI and lack of moderation, information—and our access to it—becomes even more vital. One way online activists and educators have traditionally fought back is through the creation of crowdsourced syllabi recommending resources around issues of police abuse, white supremacy, and race for educators. 'We saw it with Ferguson and Charlottesville,' Clark says of the Twitter campaigns from 2014, following the killing of unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown by police, and 2017, in the wake of the Unite the Right rally where violent protests broke out and a white supremacist murdered a woman with his car. Foster says the country underwent a 'pedagogical shift' during this time. 'Black people were saying that ignorance is no longer a defense. Folks were publishing reading lists, opening up their syllabi. All of a sudden you could educate yourself on these issues, and I wanted to document that,' Foster says. 'When it comes to preserving an official record, they typically don't care what we think,' she says of large, often federally backed institutions, which is why social media has become crucial. The National Libraries and the Internet Archive were, for a time, the principal institutions dedicated to cataloging the web. But 'only a small set of people were involved in that community,' Jules says, 'and Black folks studying to be archivists were not invited to those networks.' A nonprofit that launched in 1996, the Internet Archive operates as a library of sorts: It includes 835 billion web pages, 44 million books and texts, and 15 million audio recordings, in addition to other artifacts. Many people today think of it as the web's collective memory. In April, the Internet Archive, which was already facing legal troubles in separate cases from Universal Music Group and the book publisher Hachette, was targeted by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency when the agency cut funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities, which supports the archive. In spite of the administration's purge, Rudy Fraser, the creator of Blacksky, says he is 'heartened by preservation efforts' he's seen so far, including from Harvard Law Library's Innovation Lab—which is rescuing federal datasets—and companies such as Joy Media, which leverage AI and VR/AR to scan and annotate African artifacts, making them accessible to people on the continent who otherwise can't view them. In 2023, Fraser launched Blacksky, the custom feed and moderation service that quickly turned into the central meeting ground for many Black users on Bluesky. He tells me he also views Blacksky as a living archive. Currently its database holds 17 million posts from Black users over the last two years (excluding deletions and moderation removals). 'Because the AT Protocol is public and Blacksky's implementation is open source, anyone with the technical chops could reconstruct the dataset—minus moderation actions—even if our primary databases disappeared,' he says. 'Open source, decentralized tooling ensures that, if any single company becomes a nation-state target, the communities that rely on its infrastructure can keep operating.' Preservation efforts have also taken the form of rogue civil rights courses across college campuses. When Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah's course on race, media and global history was discontinued by Columbia University in April, Attiah decided to 'liberate my teaching work' by hosting it as an online course, aptly rebranding it 'Resistance Summer School.' 'This is not the time for media literacy or historical knowledge to be held hostage by institutions bending the knee to authoritarianism and fear,' she wrote on her Substack. The outpouring of support was seismic. According to Attiah, within 48 hours, all 500 seats were filled; the waiting list currently has over 3,000 people on it. It is still too soon to say just how much of a long-term impact Trump's attack on Black history is going to have on our population's historical literacy, but Foster and Jules say they are not deterred by the work ahead of them. 'What does it mean for the federal government, at this moment, to be stewards of Black people's history? It only takes the stroke of a pen to start dismantling things. So what does that mean looking forward?' Jules says. Ultimately, road maps to a better future are impossible without grassroots preservation efforts, Clark says. 'The destruction of those histories and records makes it harder for people to remember what that progress looked like. Both its successes and its failures. And it makes it harder for people to imagine what continued progress could look like. That is the whole point.'
Campaign ME
08-04-2025
- Business
- Campaign ME
MENA region is leveraging sustainability for effectiveness: WARC report
The MENA region is showing great opportunity for engaging on sustainability, and is making the case that a focus on sustainability – even during uncertain times – is effective. A new report titled Sustainability in the WARC Effective 100, published by the World Advertising Research Centre (WARC) in partnership with global 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). The research evaluates a decade of most effective campaigns – and demonstrates how sustainability punches above its weight. The report analysed 10 years of WARC Rankings Effectiveness 100 data to understand how social and environmental sustainability campaigns have changed over the also identifies what sustainability messaging looks like in different regions, which categories are most active in sustainability, and showcases some of the winning work from the Effectiveness 100 rankings from 2014-2024. The report highlights common themes that emerged from the analysis and offers lessons about how to be effective in this space. In the global research the Middle East region has 23 campaigns featured across the decade compared with North America with 73, which has the highest number of campaigns featured. 'This testament to the effectiveness of thinking outside the box and how purpose leads to more effective campaigns and increased profits,' Thomas Kolster, Founder of Goodvertising, told Campaign Middle East. Kolster added, '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.' The most highly ranked social and environmental campaigns, (Mean: 2014-2024), included: Vodafone: How to make small seem big Rank: 1 (2014) Home Centre: A Dad's Job Rank: 2 (2022) Lifebuoy: Help a child reach 5 Rank: 4 (2015) From the Middle East region, children's retailed Babyshop: Making Arab Mums More Visible in Culture – Rank: 6 (2022) was also featured in the research. With the intent to build emotional affinity with customers and to earn the respect of Arab mothers, Babyshop reformed the Arabic word for 'parenthood' – which really meant 'fatherhood' – and created a new word that incorporated both the mother and the father, 'Al Umobuwah.' The word was launched on Mother's Day with an online film, and a new clothing collection. Following the campaign brand love was up with 42 per cent and new customers increased with 6.3 per cent. Importantly, the initial 50 per cent negative sentiments towards the word changed to positive. As a result, the campaign successfully reached people, culture and business. The top takeaways of the WARC research Social sustainability themes underpin effective work: Work with a socially progressive theme shows up strongly in 10 years of the WARC Effectiveness 100. Over 10 years, a quarter (250) of awarded Effectiveness 100 campaigns had a social sustainability theme. Female empowerment and challenging bias are key themes: Social sustainability themes prioritise female empowerment, breaking down stigmas, public health, or tackling poverty. Fewer environmental themes across 10 years: Environmental sustainability campaigns are less prominent across the 10-year analysis. Michelob Ultra's Contract for Change in the US, Tesco's Unforgettable Bag in Asia and Intermarché in France are stand-out environment campaigns. Reducing waste is a dominant environmental theme: Environmental themes prioritise reducing waste, supporting local businesses, and finding new routes to growth via the circular economy. Toiletries, cosmetics and retail sectors lean into social issues: In Asia and North America the toiletries and cosmetics sector has the highest volume of sustainability campaigns. In Europe, the retail sector has the highest volume of sustainability campaigns across 10 years. Highlight the customer benefit: Transform social or environmental issues into tangible benefits for your target audience. For example, Dove effectively translates the broader issue of Real Beauty into a customer benefit, such as boosting confidence. Having a core issue, and supporting it over time, is key: Brands like Dove and SK-II see long-term success by consistently addressing social issues over time. Consistency doesn't mean boring. Updating creative work with fresh insights keeps it relevant. Apply creativity to find novel solutions: Use creativity to develop innovative solutions to challenges, rather than simply raising awareness about an issue. For example, Intermarché reduced food waste in the supermarket sector while Back Market created a new category.
