When the world’s most authoritative marketing intelligence platform releases its annual ranking of the most creatively awarded campaigns on the planet, every entry carries weight. The WARC Creative 100, published annually by WARC the global body that provides brands, agencies, media owners and academic institutions with tools for effective marketing is not a popularity contest.

It is a rigorous benchmark that tracks the results of creative award shows across the world, aggregating points from the most prestigious festivals of creativity to produce a definitive index of excellence. Making the list at any position is a statement. Making it as the only brand from an entire continent is history.

That is exactly what Herconomy, Nigeria’s first fintech company built specifically for women, has achieved. The Lagos-based financial services platform appears at number 61 on the WARC Creative 100 Top Campaigns ranking for 2026, tied with ITV and CALM’s Missed Birthdays campaign, both scoring 118.8 points.

Herconomy is the only Nigerian brand and the only African brand on the entire list a landmark achievement that places a purpose-driven, women-focused Nigerian fintech in the same global creative conversation as Spotify, Apple, Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, Heineken and McDonald’s.

Ife Durosinmi-Etti, founder and CEO of Herconomy

In the Top Countries ranking, Nigeria sits at number 38 with 118.8 points, a position earned entirely on the strength of a single campaign that dared to reimagine what financial services could mean for women.

The campaign that carried Nigeria to this moment is called Breastmilk Money and it is as audacious as it sounds. Developed in collaboration with Serviceplan Munich, Plan.Net Munich, Curiosity Dubai and Plan.Net Hamburg, Breastmilk Money is a first-of-its-kind financial product that transforms breastfeeding into a savings mechanism.

The concept was born from a sobering reality rooted in UNICEF data only 34 percent of Nigerian mothers exclusively breastfeed their newborns, with many discouraged by cultural pressures, societal myths and the aggressive marketing of formula products. Compounding this, Nigerian mothers who rely on formula spend over 30 percent of their household income on it. Herconomy saw a financial opportunity embedded in a public health problem and built a product around it.

The mechanics of Breastmilk Money are elegantly simple. Through an intuitive calculator within the Herconomy banking app, mothers input their child’s age, daily intake levels based on World Health Organisation breastfeeding curves and their preferred formula price range using data from Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics.

The app calculates the monthly savings from choosing breastfeeding over formula and automatically transfers that equivalent amount into a dedicated Breastmilk Money sub-account, where it earns 14.3 percent interest annually a figure deliberately chosen to mirror the 14.3 percent increase in a child’s cognitive development associated with breastfeeding, as established by Oxford University research. Funds become available for withdrawal after two years, the WHO-recommended breastfeeding duration, allowing both mother and child to grow simultaneously financially and physically.

Herconomy’s Breastmilk Money puts Nigeria on the WARC creative 100

The campaign was launched at the Herconomy Summit on March 28, 2025, Nigeria’s largest women-focused finance conference and just two days before Nigerian Mother’s Day. It was supported by an integrated campaign spanning out-of-home advertising, radio, social media and a short film titled Milk, directed by award-winning filmmaker Fariba Buchheim, which captured the real experiences of Nigerian mothers navigating the breastfeeding decision. The numbers that followed were remarkable. Within three months of launch, Breastmilk Money drove a nine percent increase in breastfeeding among its target audience, demonstrating that creativity grounded in genuine purpose delivers results that extend well beyond the advertising industry.

The global creative community took notice. At the 72nd Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2025, Breastmilk Money won three Silver Lions across Health and Wellness, Creative Data and Direct categories. The campaign also made the shortlist in four additional categories including Titanium, Innovation and Creative Business Transformation. Ife Durosinmi-Etti, founder and CEO of Herconomy, reflected on the recognition with characteristic clarity. “These awards are more than trophies for us. They prove that we are truly changing lives through creativity and innovation. Every campaign we create focuses on removing the barriers that hold women back financially,” she said.

The WARC Creative 100 ranking places Herconomy in the Financial Services category a category that on this year’s list also includes AXA’s Three Words campaign at number one with 423.4 points, Krungsri First Choice’s What the Fast at number 28 with 166 points and AXA’s Group Therapy at number 36 with 149.6 points. To compete in this category on a global stage and score 118.8 points as a Nigerian fintech that has existed for a fraction of the time these multinational institutions have operated is a measure of the creative and strategic ambition that Herconomy and its agency partners brought to this campaign.

WARC defines its Creative 100 as a benchmark for creative excellence that allows marketers to compare their performance with that of their peers globally. By that measure, Herconomy is now a peer of the world’s most creatively recognised brands.

For Nigeria, the significance of this moment stretches beyond the fintech sector. It is evidence that Nigerian brands, when matched with bold ideas and the courage to execute them at the highest level, can compete on the world’s most demanding creative stages.

Herconomy has not just made a list. It has made a point that purpose-driven creativity born from a deep understanding of Nigerian women’s real lives can earn the respect of the global advertising community and deliver measurable impact on the ground simultaneously. In the WARC Creative 100 for 2026, Africa has one representative. It is Nigerian. It is a women’s fintech. And it got there by turning breastfeeding into a financial asset.