World Creative Rankings: Burger King crowned most awarded client as talisman CMO Machado exits

Burger King’s crowning comes as its top marketer Fernando Machado departs the business after seven years to join video game maker Activision Blizzard as chief marketing officer. Machado was most recently global marketing head at Restaurant Brands International (RBI), the fast food holding company that owns Burger King, Popeyes and Tim Hortons.

The high-profile marketer took on the expanded remit in 2020 after showing a willingness to push the envelope with buzzworthy, reactive creative. Formerly responsible for Burger King only, he is behind some of the brand’s most notable and infamous advertising from the ’Moldy Whopper’ (a collaboration between David, Ingo and Publicis) to ’Bullying Jr’ and the ’The Whopper Detour’.

He also oversaw RBI’s marketing push during the Covid-19 pandemic, creating campaigns that instructed people to stay home to stay safe and unveiling ’touchless technology’ restaurant spaces designed for a post-Covid-19 world.

Over the past 12 months, he spearheaded a wholesale minimalist rebrand at Burger King as well as a diversity push to make RBI’s creative teams and advertising more diverse. Before joining Burger King, Machado worked for 18 years at FMCG giant Unilever.

He joins Activision Blizzard as the gaming giant seeks to boost revenues while homebound consumers spend more time on their devices. He will work across IPs including Call of Duty, Overwatch and Candy Crush, replacing David Messinger, who arrived at Activision Blizzard in 2019 as the company’s first global CMO.

Each year, The Drum’s research team analyzes the data from all of the advertising industry’s major awards schemes to find out which agencies, brands and creatives created the most award-winning work in the previous calendar year. This year, that meant examining 1,768 campaigns from 1,295 clients across the globe.

Below, you’ll find the top 100 clients for award wins.

The most-awarded clients of 2020