Staffers from Edelman and Momentum top our lists.
Edelman was behind some of the winningest experiential work this year (Edelman/Women for Change)
After over a fortnight celebrating the top-performing people, campaigns and companies from The Drum’s global Awards program this year, The Drum Honors is drawing to a close for 2025.
As a final hurrah, we turn today to the people behind the work that has received most plaudits from our judges this year in experiential categories.
Thanks to blockbuster work including ‘The Unburied Casket’ for Women for Change (as well as wins for work for Omo, Hellmann’s, Taco Bell and Knorr), creatives from comms firm Edelman dominate many of our role-specific analyses of the top performers in these categories.
Those honorees include Judy John and Marie Claire Maalouf, who share the top spot in our list of the best-performing chief creative officers (CCOs) in the world, beating out top talent from Biite, NVE and Ketchum. You can see the full list below.
Edelman also had the world’s top performing executive creative director in Jamie George Cordwell (beating out Deeplocal’s Colin Miller in second place) and the world’s most lauded copywriter and art director in the form of Makaziwe Khumalo and Neelam Parbhoo, respectively. In those categories, they beat out creatives from Momentum who took second place.
| Rank | CCO | Agency |
|---|---|---|
| 1= | Judy John | Edelman |
| 1= | Marie Claire Maalouf | Edelman (formerly Impact BBDO Dubai) |
| 3 | Guto Araki | Biite |
| 4 | Shelley Elkins | NVE Experience Agency |
| 5= | Indy Selvarajah | Ketchum UK |
| 5= | Anam Ahmad | The Hanging House |
| 7 | Phil Koutsis | FG|PG |
Want more? Check out all of the top winners from this year’s The Drum Honors, browse case studies of all the winning work from this year’s The Drum Awards festival and mark your calendar for February, when we’ll unveil 2026’s World Creative Rankings.
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