Clemenger BBDO, Melbourne crowned Campaign Brief Agency of the Year for fifth year running; Whybin\TBWA named NSW Agency of the Year
For an unprecedented fifth year in a row, Clemenger BBDO Melbourne has trumped all rivals to once again take out the coveted Campaign Brief Australian Agency of the Year title. All it took was a focus on their mantra: ‘The Work, The Work, The Work’…
It’s been another stellar year for the most awarded agency in the country, not only at the creative shows, but also at awards that honour effectiveness.
Clemenger BBDO Melbourne currently holds the title of most effective agency in Asia-Pacific, having won its second Agency of the Year at the 2012 Asian Marketing Effectiveness Awards (including the Grand Prix for NAB ‘Break Up’); as well as the Grand Prix for Creative Effectiveness at this year’s Spikes Asia.
In the Global Effies Index, the agency was ranked number six in the world, with its nearest local competitor at number 91.
The prestigious Gunn Report has just released its 2012 list and Clemenger BBDO Melbourne is ranked number one in Australia, alongside sister agency, Clemenger BBDO Sydney.
Closer to home, Clemenger BBDO Melbourne snared the 2012 AWARD Agency of the Year title and at the recent Australian Effie Awards, was the only agency to win five Effies across three clients, including the only awards handed out for ROI – the toughest of all effectiveness criteria.
The agency also wiped the floor at the MADC Awards, snaring eight Gold, six Silver and 18 Bronze awards along with the coveted MADC Agency of the Year Award.
Proving creativity and effectiveness is the dream combo for smart marketers, Clems Melbourne also seized some of the biggest blue chip brands in the country over the last year, including Bonds, Australia Post, Exxon Mobil and all of the CUB business, including flagship brands VB, Crown and Cascade.
Along the way it also picked up Optimum, Pedigree, Origin Energy, state government business including Tourism Victoria and Vic-Roads, and federal government business including the Australian Taxation Office and the Depart-ment of Families, Housing, Comm-unity Service and Indigenous Affairs.
During the past 12 months, the agency bolstered staff numbers by nine per cent and increased profit after tax on the previous 12 months by almost 50 per cent, with an increase in revenue by seven per cent over the last 12 months.
And it seems their clients agree – in between winning $75 million worth of new business, Clemenger BBDO Melbourne has maintained 100 per cent client retention.
Clemenger BBDO Melbourne is the only agency in the history of CB’s Agency of the Year awards to win it five years in a row, with Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney previously managing to take out the title three times in a row – in 2003, 2004 and 2005.
Whybin\TBWA was awarded Campaign Brief’s NSW Agency of the Year.
Only a couple of years ago Whybin/TBWA, Sydney was a shop producing good solid work but the big awards eluded them. In the last two years, the uniquely structured creative team, with Matty Burton and Dave Bowman at the helm, has seen the agency hurtle up the charts.
The year 2012 catapulted Whybin\TBWA, Sydney into the number one spot in awards rankings in Australia with a vast array of work for NRMA, Tourism New Zealand, MJ Bale and Taronga Zoo amongst others.
Between Whybin/TBWA, Eleven PR, Integer and Digital Arts Network, the central creative team feeding the group garnered the greatest number of awards, for more pieces of work, for more clients, across more disciplines, than any agency in the country.
For a record sixth time in the 15-year history of the awards Colenso BBDO, Auckland is Campaign Brief’s New Zealand Agency of the Year. After winning more Cannes Lions than any other Australasian agency last year, Colenso BBDO was ranked #1 most awarded agency in the world by The Big Won Report.
It’s been a standout year for Colenso BBDO New Zealand, which managed to yet again walk away with top honours from a number of the world’s leading advertising shows.
At the start of 2012 Colenso BBDO was ranked the number #5 agency in the world and number one direct agency in The Big Won Report, which calculates global agency rankings based on awards performances, while creative chairman Nick Worthington was named the highest-ranking ECD on the planet. But after the agency nabbed 12 Cannes Lions and many other global gongs in 2012, Colenso BBDO moved up to #1 in the 2013 The Big Won report, making it the first time a Kiwi or Aussie agency has ever won the title.
To read all about it, look out for the print edition outsoon. To subscribe go to Campaign Brief Online or download the subscription form:
34 Comments
Big congratulations to Clem’s Melbourne, Colenso and Whybin’s Sydney, all well deserved.
Awesome! Robert Morgan must be so proud.
I bet that will prick the balloon up Patts!
why?
clems bbdo melbourne is clearly the best agency in the country atm. Their work is quality, they win business, and they don’t lose clients.
you’re only really pissed off as an agency when you don’t get the recognition you deserve. In this instance, I doubt that anyone at GPY&R would be feeling stiffed by this. GPY&R melb is a bloody good agency. It’s just that clems is better.
(and yeah I know patts won more lions in 2012)
Firstly, well done Clems Melbourne!
But $75 million in new business?? C’mon, counting it in terms of media billings is cheating!
A lot of hard hard work from a lot of people goes into the sustained success of Clems. Well done to all involved.
Kudos to Whybins and Colenso too.
Not taking anything away from Clems. They deserve it. Well done.
But this is getting really f*#king boring now. I know a few agencies don’t even bother entering anymore.
C’mon other agencies lets knock these guys off their high horse :).
Mission 2014 – Anyone but Clems. I’ll start writing the case study.
Patts? Hard to win this one when you’ve got one client left…
Clems a deserved winner. Congrats to all the agencies who were nominated.
Meanwhile, at St Leonards…..
I’ve got to admit, this is quite extraordinary. To have sustained success for that long is no mean feat. When you think of how potent Saatchis were to win three in a row, this is unbelievable.
Congratulations must go to everyone there – and not just the creative rockstars, but the whole place, as from experience, great work comes from a collective.
Now maybe if my place could have a little of what they are having…
Why are Clems Melbourne so good and Clems Sydney so bad? You’d have thought a bit of talent sharing could get that fixed? Clems Sydney too stubborn perhaps or Clems Melbourne too proud?
Clean out the dead wood at St Leonard’s and let the Melbourne team run it. Couldn’t get any worse anyway.
Well done Whybins too. A great year, just not quite great enough.
Meanwhile, at sister agency CHE/Proximity…..
Cut to white noise.
There’s Clems Melbourne, then there’s daylight, then the rest.
What’s great is that unlike some of the CB agency of the year titles in years past, the work is real work, for big clients that wins creative gongs and effies.
Clems Sydney is never going to come close, and they know it,
Arguably their worst year in a while, work wise… but they still win…
Unless the boys at TBWA pull a massive hare out of the hat next year, (and by the way, congrats still for the NSW Agency of the Year title), Clemenger will be there for a 6th and 7th time. They are a very, very good shop. Unbeatable.
I’m with zipp. The submission must have been a good ‘n.
Imagine being a Clems Sydney client? Be like getting stuck with the ugly sister. Wouldn’t you just demand Clems Melb handle your business?
The competition between Patts and Clems is non-existant. Clems is just a powerhouse, with Patts trying hard but always falling short. And it’s always been like that, apart from a brief period in the early naughties. In Melbourne, there’s absolutely no one who could even attempt to challenge Clems dominance in creativity and new business wins. They’ve just created the perfect storm of the last 5 years, paying handsomely for the best talent money can buy and working their asses off day and night to make things happen. While all the WPP agencies keep trying to save a buck and hire the best talent they can rip-off, Clemenger walks with the lion’s share of everything because they understand that they need to spend money to make money. That’s why all the very best are there. And all the rest of us aren’t. Congrats Clems. Duly deserved for a fifth time around.
@ it needs to be said; Clems also invest and reward their staff well. From the shares scheme to creating great structure in every department. And if they see an opportunity, whether it’s new business or new thinking (read what they say in the CB write up above) they do it properly. Clients know this, that’s why they go there. It’s a well oiled machine, from top to bottom.
It really is 20 years of reign! Perhaps 25!
The only real challenge was from the Palace in the late 80s, early 90s.
I fucking hate Melbourne, but would move there in heartbeat if I was offered a job at Clems.
Congrats.
What’s with all the Patts bathing on this thread??
This article doesn’t even mention Patts.
Because every week another Patts or Ogilvy PR release comes out and you can hear the chest beating from Collins Street to bloody Cape York. We won these awards. We hired this person. We promoted this other one. We are the most awarded this and that. Fair enough, but anyone would think they’re the most awesome places on earth and the truth is they aren’t. So when news like this come out, you realise that they’re actually light years behind of being the best. So stop pretending and get on with the work, treat your people right, start hiring real talent and not just glorified juniors and maybe, just maybe, you will be the best one day.
As a soccer lover, I can’t help but compare Clemenger’s success with that of Real Madrid in the ‘Galacticos’ era. The signing of superstar players and the construction of a world class team bringing about an era of dominance and delivering levels of unprecedented financial success. Every year Real bought another star, no matter what the cost and immediate results followed. They know what they’re doing at Clems.
Thanks for clearing this up NOT CONFUSED.
But, this is not an article about Patts, there is no suggestion of comparison to Patts, no Patts people on here are bagging out the Clems win, so why all the spleen venting about Patts?
It’s kind of taking the shine of the Clems win.
if tbwa could do television they’d probably have nicked it.
There are only two comments that ‘bag’ Patts.
Don’t suppose you work there do you my precious?
Much more prevalent is the ‘bagging’ of Clems Sydney which I personally find both hilarious and justified.
Yeah, I’ll pay that.
It would be interesting to see how good agencies are relative to size, ie, an agency with a creative department of 10 who wins 30 awards against a creative department of 40 who wins 60 awards.
Clems does an awful lot of work, and some of it’s really good, but there are smaller shops who’s hit rate would be higher percentage-wise.
Is it possible to work that into the matrix? Billing covers a little, but the smaller agencies that are doing better percentage-wise might give a better indication as to which agency you want to work for. I know a lot of people who went to sunny Melbourne with high hopes only to find themselves outside the circle on the bad briefs.
Very well put 10:34. I think Scamp or Ben Kay did a great post once about how to choose where to work – divide the number of awards being won by the number of creatives in the agency. Using that Matrix, you’re probably better off working at Patts or Leos who have a higher ‘per head’ number of award wins than Clems.
Indeed, good assessment. However, you would open a can of worms as 30 awards on the same 2 pieces of work are not the same as 60 awards on 5 or 6 different campaigns for different clients on different categories. Also big integrated campaigns are definitely more impressive than winning on a print ad or a mobile app, for example.
Also, where do you rate effectiveness awards, ostensibly, the ‘real’ part of the business? It’s a gold Effie more worthy than a Bronze Lion? In essence, a real matrix is hard to create as everything lies in the eye of the beholder.
That’s what makes Clemenger Melbourne so bloody impressive as an agency and indeed as a company. They are hitting all the targets: Creativity, Effectiveness, Business, Profit. There isn’t a weak link in that place at the moment and you could probably say that if that business was audited from an external source not related to advertising they will say is a very, very good company. The best in Australia by far.
I wish I could say the juvenile nature of some of these comments surprises me, but unfortunately, it doesn’t.
It’s a sad industry that can’t just say ‘well done’ to a bunch of worthy winners and nominees without having to resort to some bullshit, per head, matrix to say agency A is more creative than agency B.
Add this to the recent launch of a business solely dedicated to helping agencies with their award entries and you start to understand the real enemy of advertising are advertising people themselves.
So very transparent… Congrats on your win, but maybe time to put away your trumpet?
Clems sure improved after I left.
Just to be clear, I’m a huge fan of Clem’s Melbourne. I turned a job offer there down after being told that it’s very hard to get on to the good briefs unless you’re in ‘the circle’ – that doesn’t make it a bad agency, all I was wondering was if there was a way to gauge percentage of good work vs work that is done in a place.
Remember when Saatchis was winning all the agency of the year titles, it was still pumping out a hell of a lot of shit work – Clem’s these days is by far the better agency, but a small shop with ten people where everything is awesome is not going to compete with a large shop where 20% of the work is awesome.
Glue Society should have won a few years ago if that was the case.