• by Paul Gough , January 16, 2004

NEW YORK - MEDIA Magazine presented its annual Agency of the Year awards to Starcom MediaVest Group and mOne.

The awards were presented Thursday night at a reception held at The One Club in midtown Manhattan. The festivities were hosted by Ken Fadner, chairman of MEDIA Magazine's parent company, MediaPost Communications, and editor-in-chief Joe Mandese. The event was attended by nearly 100 agency people - not only from the winning agencies but also from runners-up and elsewhere - who braved the cold and snow left in the wake of a storm earlier.

The awards, with full coverage of the achievements in 2003 that led MEDIA and its judges to honor the agencies, were announced in the magazine's January 2004 editions.

Starcom MediaVest Group, the Chicago-based media agency owned by Publicis, was named MEDIA's traditional media agency of the year, the magazine's first of what will be an annual award. SMG was recognized not only for the work of its big-name clients like Kraft, Procter & Gamble and General Motors - or even for its winning of the biggest account up for grabs last year, Coca- Cola, but also for much more than that. SMG's honor came from the company's overall competency, innovation and passion not only for being among the best in the business now but its commitment to serving its clients for the future.

Or, as one judge put it, Starcom MediaVest Group is the "closest to the agency of the future."

The interactive media future is here and now for MEDIA's gold "e" winner and interactive agency of the year, mOne. It's quite an honor for the WPP-owned company, which hasn't even been in business under its new name for a year. It began in April 2003 with the merger of OgilvyOne Media and MindShare Digital, combining buying and planning operations and led by Nasreen Madhany, former global media director at Ogilvy. It also has blue-chip clients like Cisco Systems, IBM Corp. and Unilever.

In honoring Starcom MediaVest Group and mOne, MEDIA Magazine's Mandese noted that 20 years ago, there weren't awards for media agencies. And while SMG took home MEDIA's first traditional agency of the year prize, it isn't the first time Starcom has been recognized in the pages of MEDIA. Starcom IP won interactive agency of the year in 2002.

"It is a revolution and a renaissance going on and it's a shame we had to pick two top agencies, as everyone's doing a great job," Mandese said. He noted that SMG probably would have scored 2003's Agency of the Year on the basis of the Coca-Cola win itself, but that the company was much more than that.

Jack Klues, chairman and chief executive officer of SMG, thanked MEDIA and its panel of judges for the award.

"For us, your judgment wasn't a popularity contest. It wasn't who achieved the most new business. It really tried to dig deep," Klues said. He acknowledged the hard work of his competitors and the efforts of the talented people with whom he worked.

Madhany accepted the award on behalf of mOne. She began by acknowledging the good efforts of fellow interactive agencies who also vied for the award.

"This is a formidable competition for us, every year," Madhany said.

She also predicted that interactive media had differentiated itself from its general media competition and would continue to differentiate itself in the future.

"It needs to be acknowledged as a medium, that it's a grown-up medium," Madhany said.

Traditional agencies OMD and Mindshare were also honored, as were interactive agencies OMD Digital, Avenue A, Starcom IP, Carat Interactive and Universal McCann Interactive.

Near the end of the formal awards presentation, Mandese pointed to the weather, which had brought several inches of fine, frozen slop and some of the coldest temperatures in a decade to the New York City region.

"The Starcom folks deserve an extra award for making it in from Chicago," he said.