Isabelle Musnik, editor of The Gunn Report for Media, said this year's report was delayed due to technological issues, but noted that WPP's Mindshare has made significant inroads in its level of creativity, and has narrowed OMD's lead considerably, ranking second with 131 points, and way ahead of third place agency, Omnicom's BBDO unit, with 100 points.
In the fall of 2008, WPP acquired red hot U.K. communications planning shop Michaelides & Bednash, and merged it into Mindshare's "invention" and planning units largely to provide more of a creative media spark.
Interestingly, other than BBDO and Publicis' Leo Burnett unit (ranked fourth with 91 points), pure play media agencies dominated the top rankings of the 2008 Gunn Report for Media (see table below).
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The grades in the report are derived from a point system assigned to each agency based on how they ranked in the major international media awards programs, including ones like the Cannes Festival of Advertising's Media Lions, and Media magazine's Creative Media Awards.
While Omnicom's individual agency networks dominate as standalone shops, WPP's GroupM accumulated the most points of any global media agency network, scoring 432 points in the 2008 report, a significant margin over Omnicom Media Group's 389, and third place Publicis Groupe Media's 280. Interpublic ranked fourth with 144.
The Most Awarded Agencies Worldwide 2008
Agency | Points | |
1 | OMD | 155 |
2 | MindShare | 131 |
3 | BBDO | 100 |
4 | Leo Burnett | 91 |
5 | Mediacom | 89 |
6 | Starcom MediaVest | 81 |
7 | Carat | 63 |
8 | Universal McCann | 62 |
9 | ZenithOptimedia | 56 |
10 | Mediaedge:cia | 52 |
11 | Ogilvy & Mather | 49 |
12 | TWBA | 46 |
13 | JWT | 45 |
14 | DDB | 38 |
15 | MPG | 34 |