BITW can track the creative tactics and sub-tactics behind award-winning and current advertising.

That means moving beyond lists of campaigns and rankings to reveal the creative mechanisms underneath: which tactics appear most often, which are unusually distinctive, where different categories or agencies over-index, and which parts of the creative toolkit are used far less frequently.

What that looks like in practice

For the WARC Creative 100, BITW classified every campaign appearance across 2024–2026 by its leading tactic and precise sub-tactic.

The result is a new way to look at award-winning creativity. Instead of only seeing which campaigns, brands, or agencies performed best, we can see the creative moves that repeatedly produce recognised work.

What does the work tell us?

Breaking campaigns down by tactic and sub-tactic makes patterns visible that are difficult to see when looking at campaigns one by one.

It can reveal which creative instincts dominate, which approaches are becoming familiar, where rarer tactics punch above their weight, and how different kinds of ideas solve different kinds of problems.

In the WARC analysis, six patterns stood out.

The point isn’t that every campaign should follow the most common route.

Quite the opposite.

A benchmark helps separate what is genuinely distinctive from what has simply become familiar.

What could this tell you about your own work?

BITW can apply the same taxonomy to an agency’s, brand’s or roster’s campaign history and compare it with relevant benchmarks. That can turn an instinct about your creative output into something much more concrete.

For agencies

Understand the creative profile already hiding in your work

Every agency has a creative profile, whether it knows it or not.

Some agencies’ work repeatedly makes the argument through product proof. Others instinctively lean more towards reframing, culture, participation, metaphor, provocation or commerce.

Those patterns may come from the kinds of briefs the agency attracts, the categories it works in, the instincts of particular creative teams, or simply the creative routes people tend to reach for most often.

A Creative Tactics Benchmark makes those patterns visible.

Different agencies can produce highly creative work in different ways and the WARC Creative 100 gives us a useful reference point for comparison.

WARC tells us which campaigns accumulated the most points across leading creative awards; BITW shows the creative mechanisms those campaigns most often used. Against that benchmark, in the example above, Uncommon leans much more towards reframing and metaphor, while VML has a broader profile with particular strength in perspective, brand assets and culture.

A Creative Tactics Benchmark makes those differences visible; not to rank one profile above another, but to show how creative strengths can differ.

See where your real strengths lie

The benchmark can show which tactics appear disproportionately often in your work and how that compares with WARC-ranked work, current campaigns or named peers.

Spot the routes you keep reaching for

A strength can also become a default. If the same mechanisms keep appearing, the benchmark can show where the agency relies on familiar answers.

Understand what different teams bring

You may already have a feeling that particular creative teams produce particular kinds of ideas. The benchmark can help turn that instinct into something concrete.

Make your next creative hire more deliberate

If your existing work is particularly strong in some creative mechanisms but consistently light in others, the analysis can help clarify what kind of creative capability would genuinely add something new.

Give less-famous agencies stronger evidence

For an outstanding regional or independent agency, the benchmark can provide a different kind of proof. Its creative profile may look strikingly similar to agencies with far greater international visibility, giving clients a more substantive basis for comparison than reputation alone.

For brands

Compare agencies beyond reputation

Two agencies may both describe themselves as creatively ambitious while producing very different kinds of ideas. Benchmarking can show where those differences actually sit.

What can BITW benchmark against?

Depending on the question, we can compare your work with:

WARC Creative 100 2024-2026 Index
Highly recognised creative work across major awards programmes.

Over 670 current campaigns with 50+ added monthly.
Work attracting attention across leading advertising publications now.

Named agencies
Direct competitors, better-known agencies or prospective peers.

What a Creative Tactics Benchmark can reveal

Dominant tactics
The creative mechanisms appearing most frequently.

Distinctive strengths
Where the work over-indexes against a relevant benchmark.

Concentration
How much of the output depends on a relatively small number of familiar moves.

Range and gaps
The tactics the work uses rarely — or not at all.

Category effects
Whether apparent creative habits are partly explained by client mix.

Campaign evidence
The individual ideas behind every significant pattern.

Ready to benchmark your creative profile?

Get in touch with George at george@bigideasthatwork.com to discuss your brief.