Hasta La Ideas

Crest, Jeep, Burger King and Obama were the big winners in the annual totting up of who won most advertising awards worldwide this year

Each year The Gunn Report pools the results of advertising awards schemes worldwide to produce a series of tables listing the biggest winners in each medium, as well as the agencies, countries and advertisiers who performed best in awards over the course of the past year. It gives points to ads winning gold, silver, bronze etc in each of the leading awards, weighting them to reflect the differing importance of the various schemes. Then it tots up the points to produce its tables.

In commercials, Saatchi & Saatchi (New York) took top honours with its Crest campaign outdoing every other spot.

GPY&R (Melbourne)’s Schweppes Burst ad came joint second with Shelter House of Cards by Leo Burnett (London) and Skittles Pinata by
TBWA\Chiat\Day (New York):

In Print, BBDO/Proximity (Kuala Lumpur)’s Jeep Two Worlds campaign came top:

Joint second were CLM BBDO (Boulogne-Billancourt)’s Dissolve Your Problems for Alka Seltzer

And BMP DDB London’s Harvey Nichols Bristol ads

In Interactive, Crispin Porter’s Whopper Sacrifice campaign, whereby Facebook users were encouraged to ditch their ‘friends’ in exchange for free burgers, came top. Second was Goodby, Silverstein & Partners for Wario Land Shake It for Nintendo

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Goodby also took third for Doritos Hotel 626

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Gunn’s All Gunns Blazing category is for campaigns that don’t fit easily into the above three. The big winner here was the Obama election campaign. Droga5 took second for its Million scheme to promote attendance in New York schools (see here). Third was BBH (New York) for Oasis Dig Out Your Soul – In The Streets campaign where the band taught street musicians in New York to play songs from their new album

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The US was the most awarded country in the world (once again) with the UK second, Argentina third. Volkswagen was the advertiser that won most awards, with Nike second and Axe/Lynx third.

The most awarded ‘traditional’ agencies were DDB London, folowed by
Almap BBDO (Sao Paulo) and Dentsu (Tokyo & Osaka). In INteractive, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (San Francisco) came top, followed by
Crispin Porter + Bogusky (Boulder, CO & Miami)  and Bascule Inc (Tokyo).

The most awarded networks were BBDO, DDB and Ogilvy & Mather.

Overall, there was little change in terms of the names picking up the major prizes last year. As Gunn reveals:

The top 5 Countries of 2009 were exactly the same as last year and in the same order.

Six of the top 10 Advertisers were in last year’s top 10. And the world’s most awarded advertiser of 2009 has topped the table for 9 years out of 11.

The top three in the Traditional Agencies table have between them topped this table in 6 years out of 11.  And 9 of the top 15 were in last year’s top 15.

Three of the top 4 in the Interactive Agencies table were in the top 4 last year.  And all 3 of them have topped the table in the three years Gunn has had it.

The top 8 Agency Networks of 2009 were exactly the same as last year (but not in the same order).  And the world’s most awarded agency network of 2009 has now topped this table for 7 years out of 11.

This is a period of unprecedented change in advertising, yet Gunn paints a picture of a static industry. So what’s going on – are the same names dominating because they have the budgets to carpet bomb schemes around the world or have they just adapted fast to the new realities? Are awards juries stuck in a time warp or, in terms of innovation and genuine ‘creativity’, does Gunn paint a false picture of who is doing the best work?

Does it matter? Well it does in the sense that both agencies and clients use Gunn as the basis for some major decisions – over who gets appointed by clients, over who gets hired by agencies and over renumeration packages. And it certainly matters within agency networks as they assess the output of each office.

More info and details of how to buy a copy of the report here