Highly awarded creative work is nearly twice as effective, but only when brands commit

New Delhi: Highly awarded creative work is also more likely to deliver measurable business impact, and the link between bold ideas and commercial performance is getting stronger.

That is the headline finding from “The Health of Creativity 2025,” the latest analysis published by WARC. The study looks at 5,600+ ideas awarded for either creativity or effectiveness between 2016 and 2025, using data from the WARC Rankings, which track the top regional and global award shows every year.

WARC’s view is blunt: creativity, when properly backed and properly run, drives results.

One in five creative award winners is also an effectiveness winner

According to the report, 21% of ideas that win creative awards also go on to win effectiveness awards. 6% of all ideas studied make it into the WARC Effective 100, which WARC classifies as “highly effective.”

Both numbers are slightly higher than last year’s edition of the report, when the creative-to-effective conversion sat at 20% and the “highly effective” figure was 5%.

In other words, the best creative work is not just fame. It is moving business outcomes strongly enough to be noticed in effectiveness juries.

“Mounting evidence shows creativity is an important driver of campaign performance,” said Amy Rodgers, Head of Content, WARC Creative. “We wanted to understand whether creatively award-winning work has maintained or enhanced its effectiveness advantage, and what the common traits of the most creative and effective ideas are right now.”

If you’re truly best-in-class creatively, your odds double

Among the most creatively awarded ideas, the ones that rank in the WARC Creative 100, the effectiveness “conversion rate” jumps from 21% to 44%. That means nearly half of the most decorated creative ideas also end up being recognised for effectiveness.

Translated to marketer language: elite creative work is about twice as likely to be proven effective.

Is 21% “too low”? WARC argues maybe not and gives three reasons.

First, not every brand is resourced or set up to both deliver big creative work and then document impact with the rigour award shows demand. Second, there’s been a shift in many organisations toward near-term performance work and away from classic brand-building, which can depress effectiveness storytelling. Third, some brands simply don’t have the size or money to run impact measurement studies at the same scale as global giants.

TV is losing its default status as lead channel

WARC analysed 151 “best of the best” ideas that were highly ranked in both the Creative 100 and the Effective 100 between 2016 and 2025, and looked at which channel led those ideas.

In 2018, 43% of those top-tier ideas were led by TV.

By 2025, that number is down to 26%.

Television is still powerful territory for emotional storytelling and brand memory. The report says TV’s strength is unchanged there: it remains the easiest place to deliver sweeping emotional narratives and plant associations that last.

But no single channel is replacing TV as the lead anymore. Instead, leadership is spreading across a wider mix of touchpoints. That reflects how ideas now have to earn attention, travel organically, and trigger response across formats, not just drop a single 60-second film and call it done.

Emotion still matters, but information is not dead

There is a long-running industry claim that “emotional beats rational.” WARC’s data mostly supports that, but with an important nuance.

The most successful ideas blend both.

Among the 151 best-of-the-best ideas:

• 35 percent used an informative (rational) message
  
  
• 33 percent leaned on emotion
  
  
• The strongest work used a balance of the two
  
  

WARC frames it this way: fame-building, memory-driving creativity still matters, but clear information and usefulness are not optional. You win when you make people feel something and also tell them something.

Brand building still shows up in the hard numbers

Nearly three out of five (57%) of the highly creative and effective ideas focused on brand equity, not just a short-term promo. These brands committed to a clear promise and then backed it through the product, the pricing and the advertising.

At the same time, sales impact is absolutely on the scorecard. Almost two-thirds (61%) of the most creative and effective ideas drove measurable sales outcomes.

That combination, long-term brand effect plus immediate commercial effect, is a key pattern in the work that ranks at the top of both creative and effectiveness lists.

Earned media matters commercially, not just for PR

For years, marketers have treated earned media (coverage, conversation, cultural pickup) as a “fame metric.” WARC’s data suggests it is more than that.

71% of the most creative and effective ideas tracked PR value. The report says earned media is still extremely valuable in building fame and engagement, but stresses that it is increasingly being linked to sales lift, not just buzz.

Retail and QSR brands are punching above their weight

Retail emerges as the sector delivering the highest density of highly creative and effective ideas. Quick service restaurants (QSRs) in particular stand out.

This follows a trend marketers have noticed in the past few years: fast-moving, promo-heavy categories that live and die on daily consumer choice are getting sharper about using creativity to drive immediate traffic and long-term brand distinctiveness at the same time.

That is now showing up in the awards data at scale.

Commitment (not just cleverness) is what separates the best

A familiar pain point inside marketing teams is this: “We had a great idea but didn’t really back it.”

WARC puts a number on that.

The report uses a measure called “creative commitment,” which blends three things:

• Media budget
  
  
• Duration
  
  
• Number of channels used
  
  

The conclusion is blunt. Creative commitment correlates tightly with effectiveness.

Longer-running ideas, deployed across more channels and backed with more spend, are far more likely to drive sales, build the brand, grow market share and impact profit.

WARC compared the “best of the best” work against the broader set of case studies in its database. The creative commitment score for the top tier sat at 7.0, versus 5.9 on average.

Crucially, WARC says this is not just “big brands spend more.” The lift is not purely a function of company size. It is about how seriously the organisation backs the idea it says it believes in.

In plain terms: brave work works better when you actually invest in it, keep it on air, and make sure it shows up in more than one place.

The bigger industry story

There are a few takeaways for CMOs and agency leads.

One, creativity is still a business lever, not an indulgence. The best creative ideas are meaningfully more likely to prove effective.

Two, TV is no longer the single, assumed hero channel for effectiveness. That power is now shared across a broader ecosystem, and top ideas are architected to live across touchpoints, not simply “supported” by them.

Three, emotional storytelling remains powerful, but rational clarity did not die with brand purpose decks. The best work is doing both.

Four, earned media is now being treated and measured as a revenue driver, not just a PR win.

Five, you cannot cheap out. The most effective creative work is not just smart. It is supported, sustained and repeated.