Lowe India and BBDO Guerrero Philippines win metal at WARC Prize for Social Strategy

The Facebook-led ‘Mariachi’ campaign for Doritos has been named the world’s best social strategy.

The case study, authored by Tom White of agency AMVBBDO, won the Grand Prix at the inaugural Warc Prize for Social Strategy, taking home a $5,000 prize. It described how Doritos had sent a Mariachi band playing 80s hits around the UK to liven up parties. The strategy opened up a new audience to the brand, without alienating its core youth market.

The Mariachi paper also won a $1,000 Special Award for best use of analytics. A separate paper from AMVBBDO, on the ‘#Youdrive’ campaign for Mercedes-Benz, won a $1,000 Special Award.

The Prize set out to find the best example of a marketing strategy that drives conversation, sharing, participation or advocacy. Entries were asked to show how their strategies had delivered credible business results.

A total of 18 papers, submitted from 12 different markets, won Gold, Silver, or Bronze awards. A Silver and a Bronze went to Asian agencies Lowe Lintas & Partners India and BBDO Guerrero Philippines respectively. Lowe Lintas won Silver for Lifebuoy ‘Help a Child Reach 5’ (pictured top) and BBDO Guerrero a Bronze for Philippine Department of Tourism ‘It’s More Fun in the Philippines.’ (left)

The $10,000 Prize, in its inaugural year, attracted 130 entries, and a shortlist of 37 was announced last month.

As well as the two campaigns from AMVBBDO, four other papers won cash prizes: The Evian ‘Baby&Me’ campaign from BETC Paris won a $1,000 Special Award for the best long-term idea; Mizuno Running’s US campaign ‘The Mezamashii Run Project’ won the $1,000 Special Award for the best social business idea; and the $1,000 Special Award for the best low-budget entry was split between a New Zealand animal-rights campaign for Paw Justice, and an anti-smoking effort from Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.

The Prize was judged by a panel of senior advertisers and agency-side strategy experts. The panel was led by Prize Chairman Pete Blackshaw, Global Head of Digital and Social Media at Nestlé.

“I was really impressed with both the quantity and the quality of entries,” said Blackshaw. “The winner really stood out because it was fundamentally social by design and was well executed. It struck a good balance between appealing to parents and to teenage boys.”

Blackshaw added that the Prize had left him “really encouraged” about the efforts to show the business impact of social strategy. “As an industry we have a lot more to learn in this area. All of us in our companies are still trying to figure out norms and benchmarks in terms of what drives impact.”

Visit here for the full list of winners.