Kantar, the world’s leading marketing data and analytics company tested more than 12,000 creatives for its clients around the world in 2023. Over 11% (1,400+) of those creatives were tested in India. Today, Kantar unveils the ads that were most effective and creative across India in 2023.

What makes these awards unique is that consumers are the jury. As people control a brand’s fortunes through their spending power, their voice decides what is effective advertising. The India report shortlists close to 300 ads, tested across categories, markets, TG’s and media channels.

The winners list has doubled from last year, with Kantar awarding 10 standout performers in the Television ads category and 4 in the Digital ads category.

Television categories include Food & Beverage, Home Care, Personal Care, Services and Unstereotype. New categories introduced include ‘Original Creatives for South’, ‘Adaptations for South’, Most Creative & Effective TV Ad (overall) and Most Consistently Effective Advertiser. Creatives for Digital continue to grow this year as well, with Kantar awarding standout performers in 4 categories- 3 based on ‘Ad Length’ format and one for the Most Creative & Effective Digital Ad, for bringing to life the exciting storytelling possibilities in the digital world.

All ads exemplify essential characteristics of being creatively engaging and landing persuasive stories that enhance brand sales.

Kantar Creative Effectiveness Awards India 2024 Winners:

Commenting on this year’s findings, Soumya Mohanty, Managing Director & Chief Client Officer- South Asia, Insights Division, Kantar said, “Earlier this year, Kantar launched the Blueprint for Brand Growth– a breakthrough understanding of how businesses build strong & profitable brands. One of the growth accelerators for building strong brands is to pre-dispose more people. Great advertising builds pre-disposition and loads the dice in favour of the brands. Creative content can and should punch above its weight”.

Key highlights from this year’s report:

1. Learnings from Kantar’s Blueprint for Brand Growth indicate that great advertising is rocket-fuel for building predisposition: growing meaningfully different brands in a more effective and efficient way. Creative quality, second only to brand size, greatly influences campaign profitability, with double the impact that reach does on brand salience.

• Kantar research emphasizes that ads must persuade and convey messages that are novel, credible, relevant, and different to enhance short-term sales. But high-quality ads, which leave a lasting impression, generally perform well in both short-term sales and long-term brand-building (Kantar LINK database), thus reducing the need to spend money on performance marketing.

• Beyond brand recognition, generating a strong emotional response is key, because emotion helps build strong memory structures, and most advertising effects are not immediate. Emotion plays a critical role in effective creative- and not just in TV content.

Ad learnings from 2023:

1. Make purpose personal: 65% of Indians will buy brands that stand for something they can identify with. While purpose or value led creatives open possibilities for highly emotively engaging creatives, the effective ones execute it in a manner such that it becomes personal to the consumers.

• License to surprise: Consumers are open to original creative ideas- ones that are hyper creative or break existing category codes. The reward for the brand lies in the ability to integrate the persuasive and meaningful impressions into the creative idea. Pre-testing helps identify the possible risks of comprehension and resonance.

• Going Native: Only 28% Indians (vs Global average 75%) have watched any ‘foreign’ content. Over 25 years of Kantar Link™ ad evaluation reveal a striking truth- ad transference across Indian regions is just about a third. This challenges the assumption that a single pan-India creative approach, even with universal and validated consumer insight, will yield positive returns on objectives. Brands are now refreshingly taking on the challenge and opportunity of engaging the Southern consumers differently from Hindi-speaking markets. Investing in original creatives, by going native on multiple dimensions- insights, creative idea & treatment and execution ensures maximizing of reward for the brand.

• Go deep & wide: The most efficient route to optimize budgets for creating ads that effectively crossover the transference challenge across the many India’s, is to create regional adaptions by playing with backdrop, celebrity, casting, product window visualization, slogan etc. Go deep and wide is about taking a campaign pan India by starting with a pan India insight, creative idea & treatment but execute with some nativity elements to amplify the resonance with the regional markets. Pre-testing helps to identify whether the mix of insight, story & elements work together as intended and identify opportunities for improvement.

• Embed the Brand: The value of creativity starts with the brand. While executional elements like distinctive brand assets and consistency in advertising style are undeniable aids in ensuring that the brand takes credit for the impressions left behind by the creative, it’s potential is amplified when the brand is integral to the story.

**In our top quartile ads compared to the bottom quartile ads, we observed more consistency (+49%), greater use of established branding devices (+14%), and the inclusion of related music (+26%).

• Weave in the product story: Executions that can creatively integrate the specific competitive reasons to consider the brand into the narrative tend to be impactful. The role of creativity is thus not just to entertain but also leave behind vivid impressions that make the brand more meaningful to the consumers.

• Specific learnings for the digital landscape:

1. Precision targeting is officially giving way to mass media avatar of Digital and there’s an increasing recognition of the importance of brand marketing on digital platforms. Creative Quality getting increasingly critical for ensuring ROI for digital- could unlock 35%+ incremental sales per impression.  
   1. Effective content on TV does not automatically mean success in digital – Ads that perform well in TV have only a ~50% chance of performing well in digital.
   1. Emotional resonance significantly enhances digital advertising’s impact on brand building. Ads that evoke stronger emotions are 3.3x more likely to drive long-term brand equity and 2.75x more likely to generate impact compared to those with weaker emotional connections.

Prasanna Kumar, Head of Creative Domain & Executive Vice President- South Asia, Insights Division, Kantar added: “Truly creative ads are the ones that are effective. The journey from being just creative to being effective starts by including your key stakeholders – your target consumers, into the process by pre-testing your ads. This year we have seen some original creative ideas shine through by ensuring that they have brand and consumer at their heart.”