This story was originally published in the Spring 2023 issue of strategy.
Every year, strategy’s Creative Report Card tracks and tallies the awards taken home by agencies, advertisers and creatives over the past year to help the marketing community know who’s at the top of their game. This week, we are talking to this year’s cream of the crop to get their thoughts on creativity, challenges and the secret sauce to creating a winning shop. You can see interviews with the other honourees here, and be sure to check out the full rankings.
Kraft Heinz
#1 Brand
Nina Patel, VP of North America Brand Communications, The Kraft Heinz Company
What’s sparking creative change?
We’re in the midst of a pretty exciting transformation. Since 2019, Kraft Heinz has been driving an impressive turnaround story with creativity and marketing as a lynch pin to its success.
In 2022, we rebuilt a powerhouse North American team from the ground up with a focus on creativity, connecting at the speed of culture, building engaging personalized experiences, and leveraging data to drive a more intimate relationship with our consumers.
How’s that turned into so many borderless, mega-creative ideas?
We’ve transformed our marketing to be more consumer-obsessed by renovating legacy brands and leaning harder on creativity to grow love and relevancy – finding what makes our brands unique, identifying ownable brand and product truths that really resonate with consumers, and listening to what’s happening in culture with an eye to moments where all of that can be combined to get to an explosive idea. Unleashing this kind of change has been possible with the creation of The Kitchen, a best-in-class in-house agency that listens, creates and moves at the speed of culture, but also in partnership with our incredible external agency teams, which have built enduring creative platforms that modernize our brands and ultimately drive the business.
And the ROI?
We’re making big strides against our creative ambition to be the indisputable creative leader in food and that progress is getting noticed. In the last 24 months, we were ranked number four on Ad Age’s Marketers of the Year list. In 2022, we had our biggest year at Cannes with 11 Lions and 28 shortlists, saw engagement grow +7% and earned +6% to record highs. The Kitchen North America has built 3,000-plus assets across social platforms like TikTok, Twitter and Instagram. This kind of agile content creation has delivered more than two billion impressions and grown ROI for the company’s marketing spend.
The bottom line?
It’s a great time to be a marketer at Kraft Heinz and we’re ready to keep building on this momentum.
IKEA
#2 Brand
Johanna Andrén, Head of Marketing, IKEA Canada
IKEA is known for meatballs and much-loved (and envied) advertising. How do you top that?
Over the last year, we struck a healthy balance between IKEA Canada’s long-term brand building efforts and short-term tactical communication in favour of long-term so we could tell stories authentically – allowing IKEA to build brand affinity and reflect our core values of diversity, equality and sustainability. The recent launch of our new “Bring Home to Life” brand platform builds on our ambition to support the emotional value of our brand beyond our functional offering, not only with consumers but co-workers as well. Grounded in authentic, human stories, marketing led the initiative to infuse the new platform in every co-worker and customer touchpoint, from marketing campaigns to the in-store experience, from online at IKEA.ca to content on social media and within co-worker areas. This approach helped us build stronger moments of connection and energy with our co-workers and customers and increased overall awareness, connection to IKEA and pride to work at IKEA.
Have you been able to gauge the impact of all that work?
When efforts to highlight the unique IKEA store and web experience in a fun and twinkly way have resulted in more consumers visiting and purchasing in store and online (+123% store visits, +1.3% sales), we know we’re heading in the right direction.
Pfaff-Harley Davidson
#3 Brand
Brandon Durmann, brand marketing lead
What difference has “Tough Turban” made?
Pfaff Harley-Davidson is proud to champion an idea that celebrates the diversity of our ridership. We’re honoured to be part of an initiative that helped build awareness of a core issue and drive innovation to support our vast community of riders across Canada and around the world.
And the business impact?
“Tough Turban” was featured in mainstream media around the world and had a positive impact on how people feel about the Pfaff Harley-Davidson brand. This initiative contributed to last year being our biggest year ever.
