Author of "The Big Won" report Patrick Collister gives an overview of the survey's winners and points out what the campaigns did really well.
In 2003, I launched "The Won Report", a below-the-line cousin to above-the-line's "Gunn Report". It was an analysis of the world's best direct marketing (DM), as measured by the quantity and the quality of awards won.
If you win a Gold at Cannes, for instance, you score more points than if you win a bronze at a local festival.
At the end of the calendar year, the agency, network and campaign with the most number of points are winners.
In 2005, digital was added to DM. And in 2006 I looked at all awards across all media, though the results were not published.
As all agencies shrug off their labels as above or below-the-line shops, they are beginning to win awards across all categories. We wanted to track them as they did so. Thus, the re-launching of "The Won Report" as "The Big Won". The ambition is that when you go to thebigwon.com, you can find out the top campaigns and top agencies across all disciplines -- press, posters, radio, TV, digital, direct and innovative solutions.
The really interesting part of the survey is when you look at agencies by total creativity because it is only then that the true pattern of how advertising is changing begins to emerge. For instance, the top agency in the world for the most number of awards won, irrespective of category, is Jung von Matt. This is a result few could have predicted, yet the German agency won awards on over 40 separate campaigns, in TV, press, poster, digital, direct and innovative media categories.
Crispin Porter + Bogusky also shone, winning awards in every media type but giving further evidence they are the most genuinely integrated shop in the world with their "Safe Happens" campaign for Volkswagen and the X-Box "King Games".
The first Aussie campaign to feature in the rankings is BMF's "New Form of Currency" website for Macquarie Bank at No. 36. Next is Leo Burnett, Sydney, for the online component of its WWF "Earth Hour" campaign.
Even though I am the author of "The Big Won", and while I find the results fascinating, there are, as an English Prime Minister once said, "lies, damned lies and statistics."
Perhaps the most important idea of 2007 was Nike+, when digital moved off the screen and out into everyday life. It led to the extraordinary collaboration between Apple and Nike as music and running were combined in a completely new way that created, almost as a by-product, whole new communities of rockin' runners.
For me, a similar idea which deserved to win even more awards for innovation than it did was the brilliant "Boony" campaign from George Patterson Y&R. It had an ingenious way of engaging with cricket nuts while they watch the baggy caps on telly with their mates -- a sign of a confident agency and a smart client.
Most marketers of FMCG brands are obsessed with TV because predictions of frequency and reach allow accurate predictions of ROI. And even though online media allow for tighter, more meaningful measurement of advertising success, it still requires an act of faith to buy the initial creative idea.
A.G.Lafley, president of Proctor & Gamble, puts it nicely when he addressed his marketers at the rear end of 2006, saying, "It's an incredibly exciting time to be creating and building brands. We have a greater opportunity to move beyond transaction to relationships than ever before, and capturing this opportunity requires us to form higher quality relationships that are more collaborative and more giving." He added that we must all learn "to begin to let go" and that, "we have to strike the right balance between being in touch and being in control. Now the irony of this is, the more in control we are, the more out of touch we become."
Indeed, the most exciting ideas of the year are those in which the clients really did let go. Beacon ideas that will influence creatives around the world were "Brawny Academy" from Fallon, Minneapolis, "Axe Gamekillers" for Axe/Lynx from BBH New York and "King Games" for Burger King from CP+B.
These are big ideas which changed the relationship between client and agency dramatically because they were ideas which generated revenue in their own right, separate to brand sales.
The "Gamekillers" was a 60-minute show sold to MTV; "Brawny Academy" is set to run on terrestrial TV after the first series ran only online; and the X-Box games designed for Burger King were sold at $3.99 each.
Did the agencies involve get paid simply for the number of hours worked on the project? No. They negotiated a slice of the pie.
Inspiring ideas from down under include Leo Burnett's "Earth Hour" campaign for WWF, when Sydneysiders were persuaded to turn off the lights one night to save energy. For "Bonded By Blood" for Adidas from TBWA\Whybin, All Blacks were persuaded to give up some of their blood, which was mixed in with the inks that printed the official team poster.
"Poms Will Whinge" from M&C Saatchi made us laugh, even in London. And if we do whinge, it's because we envy the closer lines of communication between agency creatives and senior clients that seem to exist in the Antipodes.
No surprise then that the top DM campaign of the year went to a Kiwi agency, AIM Proximity, with an enviably witty campaign from AIM Proximity Auckland for the bank of New Zealand.
Patrick Collister is CEO of Creative Matters. Read full bio.