Giant Spoon used the Empire State Building and its leading-edge light-show capabilities to take onlookers into the fantastical world of "Stranger Things" earlier this year -- one of 15 reality-bending activations the agency coordinated around the world.

Mindshare's brand refresh separated the terms "mind" and "share" to connote a new kind of collaboration with the other professional services entities it does business with: clients, parent company, sister and partner agencies, vendors and suppliers and consumers.

This most likely is the most anticlimactic Agency of The Year award profile I will ever write. That's because I called GroupM as our probable holding company-level entity of the year at the mid-year mark back in July, based on what it had already accomplished by that point. I added that it was GroupM's to lose, and challenged its peers to step up and prove me wrong.

It's not just the data mining, machine learning and automation powered by its proprietary tech platform Alli that differentiates PMG, but its account teams' ability to move with agility based on its outputs that differentiate it from the big holding companies it is competing with.

It's not just the technology and data analysis that supports Merkle's nomination for Search Agency of the Year, but also the culture and the forward-thinking approach led by its employees.

At a time when plenty of consumer marketers are leaning into acronyms like ESG -- environmental, social and governance -- as part of their brand promise, Patagonia took the ultimate step in 2022 and literally gave the entire company away to a single shareholder: Planet Earth. “For years, we looked for a way to lock in Patagonia’s purpose and unlock more value to fight the environmental crisis. Well, we did it,” the company said in a promotional email linking to a letter from its founder and chairman Yvon Chouinard explaining why he gifted …

NBCU saw an opportunity for an inflection point in 2022 and executed what is probably the best sell-side research and marketing effort to restructure the TV ad marketplace since Turner's Media at the Millennium shifted billions of dollars from broadcast to cable.

Pritchard was awarded for his focus on diversity and inclusion and his calls for fundamental changes in the media buying and selling process, which include eliminating audience guarantees and makegood ads and his recent declaration that the industry should abandon general-market media targeting.