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Spotlight on: WARC (World Advertising Research Centre)

Did you know the Library provides free access to WARC?

WARC, accessible through the A-Z database list, is the World Advertising Research Centre's advertising and knowledge database. It hosts a collection of case studies and articles on advertising, marketing and media activity, and is great for finding in-depth case studies on advertising campaigns, strategies of leading brands and analysis on recent trends.

WARC also includes marketing intelligence, research papers, consumer insights, advertising trend data, trends in TV viewing and profiles of major brand owners.

Searching for marketing information on WARC 

Start by typing a company, brand, or industry into the search bar:

At the top of the results list, you will see a Shortcuts option for related topics. Click on these for a comprehensive list of resources on this subject:

To filter your results, you can use the column on the right-hand side.

Browsing by topic/industry on WARC

The advantage of using the Browse function from the top-level menu rather than the Search box is that you can access resources curated by WARC editors. Hover the mouse over ‘More’ in the top-bar menu and click on Topics/Categories in the drop-down menu:

Selecting Categories will take you to a comprehensive set of industry headings and subheadings you can click on to browse resources in WARC:

Saving the results of your search

You can either download the articles as a PDF (or sometimes as a PowerPoint presentation) or you can email them to yourself. When you have clicked on an article, look for the download or envelope icon.

Using the Case Finder 

Strategy is one of the key elements of WARC. The Strategy section includes best practice, WARC guides (on topics including the consumer crunch and connected TV) and case studies (to see what a high quality, award-winning marketing campaign looks like).

To access the Case Finder, open the Strategy menu in the top-bar menu.

To find cases, add keywords via the Add keyword box and then click on the Find Cases button.

You can filter your results using the categories provided. For example, you could filter by Location to Europe, by Campaign Objectives to Brand building, by Media & Channels to Television, by Target Audience to Men, Middle income, Adults 26-55, and by Campaign Duration to Up to 3 months. As you add them, your filter selections display in the right-hand frame and the number of matching cases refreshes to take these into account. When you have finished adding all your filters, click on the Find Cases button.

WARC also offers curated resources on Sustainability and Diversity, Equality & Inclusion.

And if you prefer audio as opposed to written content, you can also access WARC talks, which include a series of podcasts and webinars.

One final feature heavily used by universities is the Creative 100, Media 100 and Effective 100 lists, which provide rankings for the world’s most awarded campaigns and companies. These can be accessed from the Creative top-level menu. 

WARC is an indispensable resource for business, marketing and media courses, and a rich source of data in many other fields. So exploring WARC may improve your mark!