Kantar’s Blueprint for Brand Growth was launched in May. It is based on our global analysis of behavioural and attitudinal data over the last decade. The Blueprint now infuses everything we do across Kantar, from the work we do for clients, to the IP contained within our solutions, and it connects our narrative across the business.
This year, we decided, for the first time, to unite the various awards we give at Kantar under the new umbrella of the Brand Blueprint Awards. With many of our clients present at Cannes, we wanted to take the opportunity to celebrate the best performing brands, by giving out a total of 13 awards – underpinned by our data.
On a beautiful Cannes terrace over dinner, we were delighted to give out awards to our clients and celebrate these excellent global achievements, proving that brands that have the right strategy, and activation and measurement approaches in place set themselves up to win versus their competitors.
The awards celebrate excellence around the Blueprint growth driver, Be Meaningfully Different to More People, and the three growth accelerators: Predispose More People, Be More Present and Find New Space.
Congratulations to all our winners
Most Meaningfully Different Brand: IKEA
Fastest Rising Brand Driven by Meaningful Difference: Corona
Most Creative Effective Ad in Digital/Social: Kahlúa for "Gasp"
Most Creative Effective Ad in TV: Heineken for ‘H150 Whateverken'
Most Consistently Effective Advertiser: Mondelez
Most Progressive Ad: TENA for ‘TENA Men Legend '
Best Digital Ad Platform: Amazon
Meaningfully Different Experience: Air France
Best Brand for Shopper Conversion (Food & Beverages): Oreo
Best Brand for Shopper Conversion (Beauty & Homecare): Sunsilk
Most Consistent Buyer Growth (Food & Beverages): Doritos
Most Consistent Buyer Growth (Beauty & Homecare): Closeup
Most Meaningfully Different Innovation: Diageo
We’ve chosen to focus on two of our award winners, Most Meaningfully Different Brand (Be Meaningfully Different to More People) – won by IKEA, and Most Creative Effective TV ad (one of our Predispose More People award winners) – won by Heineken, to bring to life the characteristics of our winners.
Most Meaningfully Different Brand: IKEA
Our award for Most Meaningfully Different Brand went to IKEA; the brand with the highest Meaningful, Different and Salient score from our BrandZ survey data.
IKEA wants to improve everyday living, combining value with quality, as well as delivering a meaningfully different experience.
The brand meets peoples’ functional and emotional needs through its design, its experience and its famous flat-pack furniture, which is rewarding to build. It is different to competitors and consumers are unwilling to substitute the brand for another; there’s still no direct competition with the IKEA experience.
A few examples of how IKEA brings their meaningful difference to life:
- A practical take on bringing the retail experience to life: ‘This is an IKEA store’, which won a Silver at Cannes. This campaign from the Philippines, an archipelagic country, which means that IKEA can’t be present everywhere, turned a variety of everyday locations, like a café and a beachfront, into a mini IKEA store, with QR codes on the labels so that people could buy the items. Items were shown being transported in Electric vehicles to amplify their sustainability credentials.
- Their ‘Guilty Pets’ campaign, in Oman, Qatar, and United Arab Emirate, where animals cause a variety of calamities in domestic situations, shows how IKEA can solve the problem because replacing the items is good value. They are simple and funny.
- Picking up on the ‘reality’ trend, they ran another campaign in Norway entitled ‘Life is not an IKEA catalogue’ which won a Bronze in Print and Publishing, showcasing interiors as they are, not glossy catalogue photos. We see a child playing in an IKEA-furnished room, then the camera pans around to the mother being sick on the sofa (which is washable).
IKEA | Life is not an IKEA catalogue
IKEA aims to be a sustainable brand – they have reduced their climate footprint by 24.3%. They also encourage sustainable purchases, through flat pack formats which reduces storage and delivery space requirements.
In Canada, IKEA introduced their Second-Hand Tax (SHT) initiative that saves customers from paying HST tax (consumption tax) twice on second hand items, when buying from the ‘As is’ IKEA Marketplace. This campaign won a Gold at Cannes in Creative Commerce, a Bronze in Direct and a Silver in PR.
Most Creative Effective Ad in TV: Heineken for ‘H150 Whateverken’
Heineken grabbed the ‘Most Creative Effective TV ad’ in our Brand Blueprint Awards for ‘Whateverken’, which celebrated their 150-year anniversary. The ad topped Kantar’s LINK database for its ability to drive short term and long term impact for the brand.
The campaign managed to avoid the navel-gazing often associated with brands celebrating their own birthdays, and instead spoke to consumers in a way that resonated with them. The campaign leveraged an insight that Heineken is the most misspelled beer brand in the world, and leaned into how people spell and use the brand. The TV ad brilliantly brings this idea to life.
Heineken® | 150 Whateverken – TVC
Heineken and their agencies, including LePub, also tailored the idea to out-of-home (OOH) and social very effectively, with the Digital out-of-home (DOOH) and Instagram assets also winning in our Kantar Creative Effectiveness Awards earlier this year.
The campaign was not limited to paid media channels: Heineken took a holistic approach and celebrated the misspellings and misuses of their brand. They even changed their global labelling production to use all the misspellings and nicknames on beer trucks, bar signs, beer taps, social media handles and more.
This campaign won a gold and a silver Lion in the ‘Direct’ category, and a bronze Lion in ‘Creative Strategy’ at Cannes Lions, as well as three Kantar Creative Effectiveness Awards – the only ad industry awards where consumers are the jury.
What both brands have in common
Both IKEA and Heineken have a strong commitment to understanding how people perceive their brands and respond to them, whether through building their foundational Meaningful Difference, how they Predispose More People and bring their brands to life through their advertising, how they show up (Be More Present), and how they Find New Space through innovation.
Get in touch to find out more about how you can activate our Blueprint for Brand Growth.
