When Brooklyn-based HUGE hired a managing director in November 2010 to start a London office, it took a giant leap of faith. It had zero business across the pond, and only one person to drum up any. By the time the office opened its doors in January 2011 it had doubled in size - to two employees, and zero business. (The office doors actually belong to IPG sibling Lowe and Partners, where HUGE is camped out until its own space is ready in January). Weeks later the fledgling office got its first assignment from Unilever and began an ascent that …

Columns that bid a less-than-fond adieu to the outgoing year's biggest loserheads are challenging on two fronts. Stylistically, any such list risks coming off as glibly dismissive or, worse, Andy Rooney-ish. (" 'MySpace'? Looks more like 'EmptySpace' to me. Also, nowadays lawnmowers are way too loud.") On a practical level, most of these columns are filed in early November and often prove outdated by the time they find their way into readers' hands. Along those lines: If Yahoo overpays for Friendster's reanimated corpse or unveils a 2g tablet cell phone between November 15 and the time you're reading this - …

Talk about punching above your weight class: Campfire moves like an agile bantamweight, dancing and jabbing, but packing a powerful wallop. The NYC-based shop keeps itself trim - there are less than a few dozen full-timers on board - to stay nimble. Founding partner and executive creator director Mike Monello famously got his start as part of the team that created (and perhaps more importantly, marketed) the Blair Witch Project, and this beginning has clearly informed the agency Campfire became - one known for upending the concepts of marketing, branded entertainment and cross-media storytelling by heavily blurring the boundaries between …

In an industry so flooded with awards and honors, there are many ways to rank agencies. Some are based on very objective measures, such as billings, growth rate, number of awards won, or effectiveness of their work on behalf of clients. We think those are all valid and, certainly, our winners demonstrate that. But we're not shy about saying our methodology is more subjective, eclectic and - we think - meaningful. Within each category, we ranked them in terms of exceptional ...

For OMMA, choosing this year's Agency of the Year winners was more like emceeing a street brawl than narrating a beauty pageant. As the lines between digital disciplines get sketchier, we're constantly a little dizzy with the pace of updating scorecards. But we love the way a tiny agency can excel across multiple categories in this climate (Hello, Campfire!). And we're just as impressed that among larger agencies known as digital generalists, specialized skills can be as sharp as spears. R/GA, for instance, our Gold winner in 2009, is on our list this year for its killer mobile strategies.