World Creative Rankings 2025: WPP, FCB New York & Liz Taylor top the tables

WPP-owned agencies dominated the most awarded Agency Network table with Ogilvy coming top and VML second, ahead of IPG's McCann and Omnicom-owned DDB.

Meanwhile, Ogilvy’s global chief creative officer, Liz Taylor, was named the most awarded CCO in the world, having nudged ahead of VML US’s Debbi Vandeven and FCB Global’s Danilo Boer. Taylor oversaw six campaigns that made the top 100 most awarded campaign list, including Michael Cera-ve for L'Oréal, which came in third, The Cost of Beauty for Dove, ranked 12th, and Critics Welcome for the Chicago International Film Festival, which was 64th.

FCB New York continued its remarkable rise through the ranks to take the top spot as the world’s most-awarded agency. The agency’s DreamCaster work for Michelob was this year’s most awarded campaign, netting awards across seven different ceremonies including The Drum Awards, D&AD and Cannes Lions.

Michelob owner AB InBev was named the most awarded advertiser for the third year running, followed by Unilever and Apple, which was eighth in 2023 and fourth in 2024.

What does the research cover?

The World Creative Rankings are compiled over the course of a year by carefully analyzing the performance of thousands of pieces of creative work across 22 major industry awards programs.

A truly global initiative, fieldwork covered the period January 1 to December 31, 2024 and examined the results of The Drum Awards and the following 22 shows: Dubai Lynx, Spikes Asia, Adfest, Clio Awards, Guldagget Sweden Awards, D&AD, ADC US, EPICA, The One Show, Danish Creative Circle, Cannes Lions, New York Advertising Awards, Gerety Awards, Kinsale Sharks, Cresta Awards, ADCC, Golden Drum, The Loeries, London International Awards, El Ojo, Eurobest and The Andy’s.

The Drum World Creative Rankings 2025 is the largest ever. It saw our researchers pore over the results of 2,460 campaigns from 1,653 advertisers working with 1,215 agencies.

We also looked at the people behind the work. We covered the impact of 661 chief creative officers, 839 executive creative directors, 2,692 creative directors, 1,615 copywriters and 2,027 art directors from 77 countries.

How are rankings determined?

Each award win is weighted according to whether it is part of a domestic, continental, or global scheme.

Points are given for Grand Prix/Best in Show, Gold, Silver and Bronze. For shows that do not adopt this prize structure, scoring is adapted accordingly.

Points are allocated to the campaign, the agency, the client, and the individuals involved in the creative process. This allows us to not only rank top campaigns, but also agencies, agency networks, holding companies, clients and individual agency talent.

The World Creative Rankings are reliant on the credits data supplied on each piece of awarded work in each show. Therefore, we can only score the individuals and companies credited on winning entries.

Over the coming weeks you can see the results at a flash over on our World Creative Rankings hub. We’ll also be unpacking the results through interviews with the creatives who have led award-winning agencies to victory and those who have produced award-winning campaigns.

Further dedicated content will include a podcast where we speak to rising stars on their way to be being the creative leaders of tomorrow. And there’s plenty more, so make sure to keep your eyes on the site.

Meanwhile, agencies included in the World Creative Rankings should stay tuned for an opportunity to put forward a young creative for one of three places at our partner LIA’s Creative LIAisons learning academy.