In 2019, as part of Effie’s 50th anniversary celebrations, Effie Europe introduced a special recognition – Best of the Best Europe – to recognise the most effective marketing efforts in the region. This track was open to past Gold/Grand Effie winners. In order to celebrate effective work across all of Europe, the programme is now open to entries from countries without an Effie programme as well.
The 2025 Best of Europe Awards welcomes 2024 Gold/Grand Effie Winners from local Effie programmes, as well as entries from countries without an Effie programme that have run between 1 January 2023 and 31 March 2025. The category is split into an Effie Partner track (for the 2024 Gold/Grand Winners) and a track for the non-Effie markets. Campaigns can be entered into a maximum of two categories. Of those two categories, only one category submission may be an industry category. You are not required to enter an industry category – you may enter two specialty categories instead. If you’re not sure, or if you don’t see your product or service category listed here, contact us and we’ll try to help.
Best of Europe - Effie Partner Track: any 2024 Gold/Grand Effie-winning campaign from a local Effie programme in Europe may be submitted:
Best of Europe – non-Effie markets: countries without an Effie program are welcomed to participate as well. Any effective marketing effort that ran in a country in Europe that you can tell a great results story about should be considered. Specifically, any campaign that ran between 1 January 2023 and 31 March 2025 may be submitted.
Work may have started running before 1/01/23 and it may continue running after 31/03/25. All presented work must have run at some point during the eligibility period and the results score will be based on data within the eligibility period. Including results beyond the end of the eligibility period is grounds for disqualification. It is encouraged to include prior year data for context.
All vehicles & automotive aftermarket products including cars, trucks, motorcycles, vans, both brand and model advertising, gasoline, motor oil, tires, batteries, paint, quick-lube, oil change, muffler, transmission, windshield wipers, enhancements, etc.
Devices may be aimed at consumers or businesses - TVs, radios, mobile devices, home entertainment, laptops, tablets, cameras, computer hardware, game consoles, drones, external or integrated VR/AR devices, sound systems, etc. All forms of e-sports and single and multi-player video games, including virtual reality, arcade, console, mobile, online & computer games.
Fast-moving consumer goods including household goods, office products, beauty and personal care, fashion & accessories, pet care, etc.
Examples:
All food and beverage products, including fresh, packaged and frozen food; snacks; desserts; alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.
Municipal or state economic development, lotteries, utilities, civil, diplomatic or armed forces, parks, libraries, public services, etc. Includes political messages and recruitment efforts.
Health and wellness products and services that can be directly purchased by a consumer with or without physician involvement. Efforts may also be targeted to physicians or healthcare professionals. Also including work related to health insurance, dental and medical care services. Additionally, work that focuses on health education and disease awareness programs for healthcare professionals, patients and/or consumers.
TV stations/networks, websites (entertainment, lifestyle, news, trade, etc.), magazines, newspapers, consumer or trade media, radio stations, broadcasters, etc.
Plays, museums, immersive experiences, music organisations and festivals, concert series, cultural festivals, theater festivals.
Includes all forms of entertainment. e.g. apps, movies, programming (TV, online, radio), books, DVDs, video games, board games, etc. Sporting events such as Wimbledon, sports teams, etc.
Recreational, sporting, and camping goods/services and other items/services intended for leisure activity.
For a campaign which has achieved a highly successful product or service launch. The marketing must have been key to the success of the launch.
Open to all retail companies (online and/or brick & mortar) with general or specific merchandise, including department stores; online retailers; clothing, fashion, shoes or jewelry stores; food retailers; movie/book stores; furnishings and design retailers, discount/bulk retailers; home & garden stores, pet care; toy stores; specialty stores; convenience stores, etc.
Financial products and services including: overall corporate/brand image and capabilities of a financial institution; specific products or services including credit cards, charge cards, debit cards, home banking, loans, mobile payment services, mortgage, mutual funds, etc.
Includes services such as delivery services, consulting, accounting, legal, employment, realtors, domestic services, etc.
All modes of transportation such as air, train, bus, taxi, subway systems, rideshares services, bike shares, car rentals, ferries, as well as all forms of travel/tourism including cruises, hotels, resorts, amusement parks, travel websites and booking services, travel tours, tourism campaigns, etc.
For the AI Category, entrants are required to showcase their effective use of artificial intelligence to drive meaningful business outcomes. This category recognizes outstanding campaigns and initiatives where AI was leveraged as a pivotal tool to achieve specific business goals, whether it be enhancing customer engagement, optimizing operations, increasing sales, or any other measurable objective.
Entrants must provide clear evidence of how AI was integrated into their strategy and demonstrate the tangible impact it had on their business growth and desired results. This includes detailed metrics, analytics, and any other relevant data that highlight the effectiveness of the AI implementation. The judges will be looking for entries that not only display creativity and technical proficiency but also a profound understanding of how AI can be harnessed to produce real, quantifiable success.
This category is to showcase how you can create a brand experience beyond traditional advertising.
Work that truly brought a brand or product to life and interacted with a specific audience to achieve desired objectives should be entered. You may have re-invented the product demo, re-imagined the pop-up store, or led a “brick and mortar” retail overhaul; you could have created a new game, an alternate or virtual reality experience or interactive/immersive film experience that effectively showcases a new product or brand personality – it could have been anything. As long as you can prove it truly came alive and worked.
The winners of this award will show how advertisers are reaching out to their audiences to establish meaningful relationships, memorable, engaging experiences, and unique connections with their brands.
Entrants must address how the brand experience related back to the overall brand strategy.
This category is for marketing efforts from businesses targeting other businesses. Business-to-business efforts for any type of product or service, from any marketplace segment, are eligible to enter.
This award will honour the most effective integrated efforts designed to engage the shopper and guide the purchase process online and / or in-store.
• Eligible efforts include those for single or multiple brands, and/or for a category solution.
• All media channels are eligible for inclusion: mobile, digital, TV, video displays, magazines, social media, sampling programs, in-store signage and displays, etc.
• The award will be given to the efforts that best demonstrated how they effectively connected with the shopper, influenced along the path to purchase, and inspired to become a buyer.
This category is for efforts that promote corporations, not exclusively their products. Includes sponsorships, image & identity. In addition to presenting metrics related to the reputation, entrants are encouraged to also address how these metrics relate to the business of the brand and why they are important.
This award is for brands that effectively pivoted their marketing programme or business activities in response to significant structural and cultural shifts and moments of crisis (e.g. pandemic, social justice movement, political events, etc.). These shifts can be internal to the business or external. Entrants will need explain the shift to the judges, how it has impacted the business, frame for the judges how the business approach has changed in response and how has the marketing strategy adjusted to secure a successful outcome for the business/brand. It will be important for the entrants to demonstrate the effectiveness of the action for the brand. Examples can include a pivot in positioning, a change in portfolio management, a digital acceleration, etc.
This category recognizes brands that successfully partnered with influencers to achieve short or long-term marketing goals. Influencers can range from micro to macro and include social media personalities, brand ambassadors, and bloggers. Clearly define the strategy, target audience, and why the influencer was chosen.
In this category, innovative single marketing & business activities or entire marketing programmes will be awarded. You can submit any actions or business idea that has had an exceptionally positive impact on the market position of a brand, product or service. If communication was a significant element of marketing mix, work should be submitted in another competition category of Effie.
Examples of eligible activities in this category include: product/service innovation; change in packaging, both in terms of its appearance and size; design, technology or ux innovation; consumer involvement in product development; operation change; introduction/change of a loyalty program, introduction of a new distribution channel, etc.
This category recognises those efforts that were lead by media thinking. The award honours media led strategic thinking and ideas that are powerful enough to become the genesis of the communications programme itself. The line between what constitutes a creative idea and a media idea is blurring. There are occasions when the media idea or media strategy drove the entire effort. All efforts driven by the media strategy and/or idea are eligible to enter.
Examples:
• Media Strategy – Cases where media planning and strategic approach spearheaded the effort.
• Content Led – Cases led by a content idea.
• Data Driven Insights – Cases led by a data driven insight.
• Tech Led – Cases led by a technology idea.
• Media Idea Led – Cases led by a Media Idea other than those listed above.
• Positive Change – Brand: Recognising brands that are making the world a better place by using the power of their marketing platforms for "good." This category celebrates for-profit brand efforts that effectively combined business goals with a social and/or environmental/sustainability cause (health, education, community, family, etc.).
• Positive Change – non-profit: Recognising non-profit organizations and associations whose marketing efforts have effectively driven positive change for society and/or the environment and successfully contributed back to the organization's purpose.
Seasons, holidays and current events allow marketers the opportunity to build strategic marketing efforts based on the time-based interests of their target audience. This category will honour those efforts that effectively capitalized on a season, holiday, or cultural event to drive results for their business. This category also includes efforts that effectively leveraged immediate relevance, interest or importance via a targeted marketing/PR strategy around current events (e.g., elections, World Cup, Olympics, economics, etc.).
Cases eligible for this category must represent the only communications efforts for this brand during the qualifying time period. To be eligible, an entry may not be for a line extension, a sub brand, or have an overarching brand campaign to support it. Value of donated and non-traditional media as well as activation costs must be included. This category is all about what you were able to achieve with a small media budget, rather than small production and creative budget. Budget eligibility is as follows: €1 million.
This category is for efforts that set out with the explicit purpose of using social as the primary touch point or have social at their heart. The kind of idea that is specifically designed to take advantage of the socially connected consumer and the influence of social. This could include efforts that effectively worked with key influencers to reach their target audience to achieve short or long-term marketing goals.
Judges are looking for campaigns that begin with a social idea, as opposed to advertising or integrated campaigns with a social media element. They will need a clear rationale for why social was the right way to tackle the brief, and evidence of how social activity measurably and materially drove the commercial result. It is not enough to count the number of impressions, likes or shares. You will need to measure and prove the commercial value of social through the direct effect it had on audience behaviour or perceptions and demonstrate correlation with the achieved business results.
Product or service marketing efforts that have experienced sustained success for 3 or more years are eligible for entry.
Entries must have a common objective in both strategy and creative executions; with a continuation of core executional elements (e.g. spokesperson, song, theme, tagline, etc.) that demonstrates effectiveness over time.
