"If you were going to design an agency holding company today, would it look like Interpublic, Omnicom, or WPP -- or would it look more like Aegis?" Until David Verklin, a member of the Aegis board and head of its Carat Americas and Carat Asia/Pacific units, raised that question earlier this year, I'd never really thought about it. Now the answer seems all too apparent. Even Martin Sorrell, the founder and chief of global ad agency giant WPP Group, seemed to agree during a presentation at a recent Wall Street conference: "If I had to …

Like their media agency counter-parts, several marketers legitimately could have qualified for Media's 2005 Media Client of the Year. Some, like fast food giant Burger King, were brazenly daring. Others, like retailer Target or athletic apparel marketer Adidas, were incredibly creative and innovative in their use of media, developing new formats that got our attention and inspired rivals to follow suit. But after we applied our main criteria -- strategy, innovation, and perhaps most important, industry leadership -- the selection became pretty obvious to us and our panel of advisors. Our biggest dilemma was deciding why we should select …

When it comes to the amount of ink generated by media shops in 2005, it was hard to ignore the acreage accumulated by gm Planworks. In a difficult year for the auto industry and for General Motors in particular, the media shop made headlines in May by snaring the auto giant's estimated $3.2 billion domestic media buying assignment, the largest in history. Planworks, which already held the GM planning account, promptly launched a number of hugely successful branded entertainment campaigns, transferred some of GM's upfront spending into new media, launched new research initiatives, and segued its traditional …

The proliferation of media -- branded entertainment, mobile devices, blogs, podcasts, and online advertising, not to mention guerilla stunts and viral techniques -- can be a pain in the neck for most agencies. Not for Crispin Porter + Bogusky. MDC Corp.'s hot shop embraces the unknown with a big bear hug. Crispin has distinguished itself as a creative powerhouse for work on behalf of clients in myriad categories -- the BMW Mini, Burger King, Ikea, Virgin Atlantic Airways, among others. Recently, though, the agency has proven that it can approach media with the same cheeky attitude. In …

Leave it to Starcom to zig when every other media agency is frantically trying to zag. The agency that became a behemoth based on its strategic chops -- a core competency every one of its competitors claims -- is now convinced that "buying is the new black." That's what Jack Klues, formerly CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group and soon to be top dog at holding company Publicis Groupe's media arm, Publicis Groupe Media, told attendees at MediaPost's Forecast 2006 Conference last September. Klues informed the audience that "without buyers, without their scale, and without their flawless execution …

I can almost hear the kvetching now: "Media magazine is in Starcom's vest pocket." Fair enough. After only three years of publishing our annual Agency of the Year Awards, Starcom has swept all three. Actually, Starcom MediaVest Group took top honors in 2003 and 2004, while a stand-alone Starcom has won for this past year. The Publicis media group unit has so dominated for the past several years that we felt it only fair to nominate its distinct operating units. I will admit flat out that the process is somewhat subjective. We consider objective criteria such as new business …