Effie Global Index

The Effie Index identifies and ranks the marketing communications industry’s most effective agencies, marketers and brands by analyzing finalist and winner data from 50+ worldwide Effie Award competitions.

Originally launched in June 2011, the Effie Index can be used to reveal the most effective agencies, marketers and brands globally, regionally, in specific countries, or even in different product categories. The Index provides an insightful glimpse into who is actually delivering Ideas that work across the globe.

How the Rankings are Compiled

We have established a ranking system that will reward not only Effie winners, but Effie finalists. All winner and finalist data has been provided by Effie’s global network of worldwide partners. Only Effie finalists and winners that have met Effie Worldwide-approved judging criteria are eligible for inclusion in the Index. A glimpse of the Effie United States judging model can be found here.

Finalists in the Rankings

All worldwide Effie finalists and winners must achieve a minimum score in order to be selected as a finalist, bronze, silver, gold or Grand Effie winner. Not all worldwide Effie programs publicly announce and award finalists. Effie finalist status and trophies are awarded in each category at the discretion of the judges’ scores. It is possible that a category may produce no finalists, if no case meets the minimum cut-off for finalist status in that category. Similarly, it is possible to have one or two winners of any level or perhaps no winners at all in a category, depending on whether a case meets the minimum cut-off for each level of award. Achieving finalist or win status in the Effie Awards is a significant achievement. Only a small percentage of cases are finalists each year and of these, a fraction are winners.

Primary vs. Contributing Agencies

Contributing agencies receive half as many points as Primary agencies in the Effie Index, so companies receiving 6 points for a Grand Effie; 4 points for a Gold Effie; 3 points for a Silver Effie; 2 points for a Bronze or 1 point for a Finalist recognition, were originally credited as a Contributing Agency.

Point Structure

Points for the 2020 Effie Index are distributed as follows:

When multiple agency offices are credited on a single winner/finalist record, agency networks and holding companies will receive only one set of points towards their respective ranking.

Companies Included in the Index

Finalist and winning companies featured in the Index also include production companies, post-production houses and media owners, among others.

Agency Network and Holding Company Classifications

Agency network and holding company affiliations have been provided by the entrant, supplied by the official worldwide Effie partner or identified through research of key industry resources. Research occurred between December 1, 2019 and May 15, 2020.

Independent Agencies

Agencies that are not majority-owned by a holding company are categorized as “Independent” in the Index. Please note that the ownership of individual agencies may have changed since the data was compiled.

Agencies

An agency is considered a single agency office located in a specific city. For example, the New York office of Agency ABC and the Moscow office of Agency ABC are considered different agency offices. Each office is recognized as a separate, individual agency & receives its own set of points in the Agencies ranking. The Agencies ranking includes both majority-owned holding company agencies as well as independent agencies. Please note that the ownership of an individual agency may have changed since the data was compiled.

Marketer Classifications

In some instances, credits for global marketers included their local affiliation, like Coca-Cola Hellas in Greece. For consistency purposes, we have attributed the points to the global advertiser, in this case The Coca-Cola Company.

Product Category Classification

Product category information has been sourced either from the official Effie Award partner program or identified through industry research. In some instances we have made necessary judgments about how certain types of campaigns should be categorized to ensure consistency across all 51 Effie programs..

Geographical Classifications

Throughout the Index, ‘Country’ and ‘Region’ refer to where a campaign ran, not the location of the agency or marketer responsible for it.

Year to Year Comparisons

Effie Index rankings are a result of Effie Award Winner/finalist point aggregation over a single year. Rankings are not cumulative year over year. To explore the previous year rankings, use the “Filter by Year” function located in the upper left-hand side of each page.

Database Research

While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the Effie Index, Effie Worldwide cannot accept liability with respect to errors or omissions. If you notice inconsistencies or errors with the data, please let us know. Rankings are updated periodically in order to correct inconsistencies, errors or omissions.

Case Studies and Videos of Winning Work

For select cases, additional information is available in Effie Worldwide’s case database. Click on the icon to view additional information including campaign summaries, videos of winning work and available case studies.

Tell us what you think

Our aim is to make the Index as insightful as possible, so we encourage your feedback. Comments, suggestions and feedback can be sent to index@effie.org.