Welcome to the Wheelhouse, a popular series of blogs from Ebiquity’s Marketing Effectiveness team.
In this December edition of The Wheelhouse, Alexandra Voss, Effectiveness Director at Ebiquity, wraps up the year with a look back at some of 2024’s most memorable adverts. While the festive season is filled with Christmas campaigns, Alexandra shifts the focus to earlier favourites from January to October – ads that stood out for their creativity, emotional resonance, and brand-building power. Drawing on insights from Ebiquity’s effectiveness expertise, this piece celebrates the art of great advertising and highlights what makes these standout creatives a recipe for success.
With December well underway, the festive season is in full swing, and Christmas adverts are everywhere. So, here at Ebiquity, we thought we’d take a moment to reflect on some of our favourite creatives from earlier in the year – spanning January to October – to offer a refreshing break from the holiday hustle and bustle.
We took the top 200 UK advertising spenders by TV film code, and a panel of keen advert watchers whittled down the shortlist to a top 15 favourite creatives. Our UK office then voted, ranking each ad from one to five. With so many exceptional campaigns this year, narrowing it down to a select few wasn’t easy. These selections are just a few examples of how creativity and effectiveness can combine to drive meaningful impact.
Now as much as we love numbers here in the Marketing Effectiveness team, we also know how much a brilliant creative can do for our clients (it needs to look good as well as do good!): boosting sales, building awareness, and enhancing brand salience over the long term through the use of effective creative techniques.
And the ads that topped our poll are perfect examples of such techniques (now for my Top of the Pops moment):
5. Pets at Home ‘We’re All for Pets’
Pets at Home ‘We’re All for Pets’ – animals plus Meat Loaf belting out ‘I’d Do Anything for Love’, what more could you want? Our Ebiquity pollsters prove we are a nation of pet lovers with this funny and relatable advert going straight in at number 5.
3. Nationwide’s ‘In Your Best Interest’ and Persil’s ‘The Autograph’
Tied at number 3 are Nationwide’s ‘In Your Best Interest’ and Persil’s ‘The Autograph’. Both ads are informative while also delivering strong emotional resonance. Nationwide uses humour effectively, featuring Dominic West to convey their message clearly, while Persil’s heartwarming creative stars Arsenal and England’s Bukayo Saka.
It is also good to see that Nationwide has consistently featured Dominic West across multiple campaigns throughout the year. This strategy enhances brand recognition and makes their ads more instantly attributable, as the actor becomes synonymous with the brand – as a rule of thumb, we have measured at Ebiquity that the stronger the brand recognition and attribution of a creative, the higher the media ROI.
2. Currys ‘IRL’
Currys ‘IRL’ – is the most strongly branded advert among our top five. In an age where capturing consumers’ attention is increasingly challenging, this advert stands out for its unmistakable branding. Every scene features clear brand cues such as the store, logo, and signature purple-shirted staff, ensuring viewers instantly recognise it as Currys. Currys are also another brand sticking with the same look and feel over time through their different and playful ‘Beyond Techpectations’ creatives, which we would expect to measure improved effectiveness with this sustained usage.
1. Cadbury’s ‘Birthday’
A new entry at number 1 as Ebiquity’s favourite advert of 2024 is Cadbury’s emotive ‘Birthday’ creative. This advert is all about the emotional response with our pollsters calling it heart-warming and wholesome whilst putting a smile on your face. The brand cues here are a little more subtle with just the odd flash of the iconic purple chocolate bar, but that’s all you need when you are a 200-year-old much loved brand. I do recommend watching this a few times so that you fully pick up on Cadbury’s clever trip through time too!
The key aspects to a great advert then is a creative that drives an emotional response – whether that’s through humour and/or sentiment, for example – thereby boosting memorability. It should also tell a clear and compelling story within a short timeframe while showcasing strong, distinctive brand and product cues throughout. (And there will be no complaints from us if you pop in a cute animal for good measure too!)
From our extensive experience of measuring marketing effectiveness, we have found creative to be the single biggest factor in determining a campaign’s ROI; thus our team of 60+ analysts have developed a data-driven intuition for identifying which creatives will deliver returns and which won’t.
A super creative entails that you not only tick all the marketing metrics boxes, such as improvement in awareness and consideration, but also drives both short-term and long-term growth for your commercial metrics, including sales and profit.
Here are the links to each creative so you can have a watch yourself. What do you think about our favourite creatives of 2024? Do you agree, or do you have another contender?
5. Pets at Home ‘We’re All for Pets’
3. Nationwide’s ‘In Your Best Interest’ and Persil’s ‘The Autograph’
2. Currys ‘IRL’
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