World Creative Rankings 2024: advertising’s top companies, campaigns & people announced

The accolade comes as WPP-owned agencies VML and Ogilvy finish second and third, respectively, in the Most Awarded Network agency rankings, while Ogilvy London claims fifth place in the Most Awarded Agencies rankings.

Omnicom-owned DDB was ranked the Most Awarded Network, knocking last year’s number one, WPP-owned Ogilvy, down into third place, while fellow WPP-owned network VML takes second place this year, rising from sixth place last year.

On the campaign front, the number one spot in the Most Awarded Campaigns rankings goes to DDB Chicago for its ‘Apologize The Rainbow’ campaign for Mars (Skittles), which beat Saatchi & Saatchi Dusseldorf’s ‘Cheat The Cookies’ campaign for Oreo into second place and AB InBev’s ‘McEnroe v McEnroe’ campaign by FCB New York’s into third.

‘Apologize the Rainbow’ collected two Cannes Lions, multiple D&AD awards and Gold at the Clios, among other global awards during 2023, to take the top campaign ranking spot.

Advertiser AB InBev, however, has hit back to be ranked top of the Most Awarded Advertiser ranking, beating other global brands Unilever, Mondelez, Apple and McDonald’s, which make up the top five.

The Drum’s annual World Creative Rankings delve even deeper than other rankings schemes as they also reveal the people responsible for the most awarded global campaigns across areas such as creative, production, writing, art direction and commercial direction.

Taking the number spot as the Most Awarded CCO in 2024 is VML’s Debbie Vandeven, who has pushed Ogilvy’s Liz Taylor down into the second spot, with Pancho Cassis taking third.

Alexandre Abrantes of FCB New York topped the Most Awarded Creative Director rankings, with Simon Dolsten of Johannes Leonardo in second and Thomas Mori, also of FCB New York, coming third.

What does the research cover?

• The World Creative Rankings are compiled over the course of a year by carefully analyzing the performance of thousands of pieces of creative work across 22 major industry awards programs, including The Drum Marketing Awards and The Drum Awards Festival.

• The Drum World Creative Rankings 2024 is the biggest ever and saw our researchers pore over the results of 2,263 campaigns from 1,535 advertisers working with 1,135 agencies.

• We also looked at the people behind the work and we covered the impact of 590 chief creative officers, 808 executive creative directors, 2,322 creative directors, 1,521 copywriters and 1,850 art directors from 74 countries.

• A truly global initiative, fieldwork covered the period January 1 to December 31, 2023 and examined the results of The Drum Awards and the following 21 shows: Dubai Lynx, Spikes Asia, Adfest, Clio Awards, Guldagget Sweden Awards, D&AD, ADC US, The One Show, Danish Creative Circle, Cannes Lions, New York Advertising Awards, Gerety Awards, Kinsale Sharks, Cresta Awards, ADCC, Golden Drum, The Loeries, London International Awards, El Ojo, Eurobest and The Andy’s.

How are rankings determined?

• Each award win is weighted according to whether it is part of a domestic, continental, or global scheme.

• Points are given for Grand Prix/Best in Show, Gold, Silver, Bronze, and shortlisted work. For shows that do not adopt this prize structure, scoring is adapted accordingly.

• Points are allocated to the campaign, the agency, the client, and the individuals involved in the creative process. This allows us to not only rank top campaigns, but also agencies, agency networks, holding companies, clients and individual agency talent.

• The World Creative Rankings are reliant on the credits data supplied on each piece of awarded work in each show. Therefore, we can only score the individuals and companies credited on winning entries.