World Creative Rankings 2024: Discover the most-awarded ad campaigns of the past year

‘Apologize the Rainbow’ for Mars brand Skittles brought home gongs from the Andys, the Clios, Cannes Lions, D&AD, and more last year. Those wins propelled the campaign to the top of the World Creative ranking list of the most-awarded campaigns in the world. They also ensured that DDB Chicago was crowned most-creative agency in the United States and Colin Selikow was recognized as the world’s best ECD.

The campaign took corporate apologies to the next level and saw Skittles beg for forgiveness for having upset so many of its fans when it changed the flavor of its green candy from lime to apple. We recently sat down with Selikow for a behind-the-scenes look at how the campaign came together, with the creative telling us: “If we’d done this but only half-assed it and apologized to some people or issued more of a blanket apology, then it wouldn’t have been as funny or as sincere or even as weird. It’s Skittles; we want it to be absurd.”

The second-most-awarded campaign of the last year, meanwhile, came from Saatchi & Saatchi, which turned cookies into cheat codes with its ‘Cheat Cookies’ campaign with Oreo and Xbox. The project won three Golds at Cannes Lions as well as a whole host of other prizes.

‘McEnroe v McEnroe’ for Michelob Ultra was the third-most-awarded campaign of the year, helping to earn AB InBev the title of the most-awarded advertiser of the year, while Honest Eggs worked with creative agency VMLY&R (now VML) on ‘FitChix,’ a fitness tracker designed for chickens that was the fourth-most-awarded campaign of the year. ‘Missing Matoaka’ by BBDO Canada for Muskrat Magazine was the fifth-most-awarded campaign.

The World Creative Rankings are compiled by exhaustively analyzing the performance of thousands of pieces of creative work across 22 major industry awards programs throughout the previous calendar year.

That data is then used to determine the people rankings – the CCOs, ECDs, creative directors, art directors, and copywriters responsible for the most creatively awarded work in 2023. Their companies are then ranked, with these rankings including the best agencies, networks, and holding companies, which are then split by country and region. The advertisers who fund the world’s most awarded work are also ranked, while the sectors that offer the richest return in creative gongs, whether that be food & drink, automotive, retail, or charity, are also evaluated.

Head over to our dedicated World Creative Rankings hub to see the full list of most-awarded agencies in the US, plus all of our other tables and breakdowns, as well as full details of the methodology that goes into the production of the rankings.