FCB was a big winner at Tuesday night’s Marketing Awards, taking home major victories with a Best of Show and also a M for Mpact Award for its “Runner 321” campaign with Adidas.

“Runner 321” (pictured below) worked with hundreds of major marathons globally to hold the “321” number and a spot in each race for a person with Down syndrome. The campaign aims to help athletes with Down syndrome see themselves in major sporting events. On Tuesday, the Adidas creative picked up a coveted Best of Show award for Advertising, and an M for Mpact award in the Digital category.

The M for Mpact Awards are special jury prizes for bold, creatively compelling campaigns or programs that take an active stance to champion societal change and advance equality.

Best of Show in the Design category was awarded to Leo Burnett’s work to rebrand the Royal Ontario Museum. The rebrand was centred around the idea of an “immortal timeline” that imagines each object in the museum’s collection as a stitch in the fabric of shared history. Leo Burnett worked to revitalize the museum with a new wordmark, custom typeface, original photography and an adaptive design system.

Dentsu Creative also picked up Best of Show, winning in the Digital category for its “Inflation Cookbook” campaign for SkipTheDishes. The grocery shopping tool uses an algorithm to monitor price changes of more than 400 ingredients on major online supermarket websites in real time. The system was designed to combat food inflation in Canada.

The other Best of Show awarded on Tuesday was in the Public Service Advertising category, with Broken Heart Love Affair taking the win for its “Burp” campaign with World Vision. “Burp” is the hero spot for the agency’s “Feed a child. Feed a childhood” campaign for World Vision, and it takes a light-hearted approach to showing the transformative effect of food aid for children, showing several kids who have benefited from World Vision’s services, capturing the children burping and laughing amongst themselves.

Overall, Rethink picked up the most Marketing Awards of any agency this year with more than 20 Gold awards at the event. Kraft Heinz, Coors Light, Uber Eats, Scene+, Interligne, the women-led sports media brand The Gist, and the RGD Branding Awards.

Aside from the Digital Mpact award that went to FCB for “Runner 321,” McCann picked up an M for Mpact Award, as well in the Advertising category for “The Stage Zero Collection” campaign with Love & Nudes, while Rethink picked up an Mpact award in the Design category for its “KitKat Ramadan Iftar Bar” campaign for Nestle.

Love & Nudes is an inclusive lingerie brand focused on Black women, and “The Stage Zero Collection” campaign (pictured above) from McCann worked with the brand to offer a toolset designed to help women identify signs of breast cancer on darker skin tones. The campaign used social media videos, influencer partnerships and pop-up events to promote a toolset designed with medical experts’ input.

Rethink’s “KitKat Ramadan Iftar Bar” campaign (pictured above) was also recognized with an M for Mpact award after the brand launched a special 30-piece Iftar Bar to celebrate the evening breaking of the fast during Ramadan. The bar was designed to be enjoyed piece by piece each evening during the 30 days of fasting.

This year’s Hall of Marketing Gold inductees were also recognized at Tuesday’s Marketing Awards gala. Ad giants Paul Lavoie and Marlene Hore were selected as the 2024 Hall of Marketing Gold inductees. 

Hore was the first female creative director in Canada, being promoted to the position in 1976 at JWT Montreal, and later worked as vice chair and national CD of JWT in Toronto. Lavoie is a co-founder and former chairman for Taxi, an agency that first chased challenger brands in the 1990s before adding big-name clients like Mini Cooper, IKEA and Viagra, and opening offices around the world in Toronto, Vancouver, New York and Amsterdam.

The full list of winners can be found on the Marketing Awards website.