2008 Gunn Report top Agencies
The 2008 Gunn Report produced results that were not completely unexpected. The agencies at the top of the report tend to be the same ones year in and year out. The reason for this is pretty obvious in advertising experience does count. The agencies who know how to run an effective and creative advertising campaign are the most likely to become the most successful agencies and this leads to them getting a higher ranking in the report.
In the 2008 Gunn Report for the first time ever there was a tie for the top advertising campaign. This time around it was both Sony and Volkswagen who shared the award. In the case of Volkswagen this really should come as no surprise since they have been at or near the top of the awards every year since they first appeared. Sony on the other hand was a new player in the scene. The real interest for most people in the awards however are the agencies who create the campaigns. In this case the winner was BBDO.
On the 2008 Gunn Report BBDO absolutely dominated the results. They actually recorded the largest margin of victory in the history of the report. This is a little bit misleading however because the way that the Gunn report is compiled it gives a large advantage to the agency that produces the most campaigns. It also rewards agencies in regional markets. Since BBDO is the largest advertising agency and they are in reality a network of agencies with branches in dozens of different countries it is not too surprising that BBDO were the dominant agency on the Gunn report once again.
The way that the Gunn report is calculated is to simply take a look at all of the awards shows that are help each year for advertising campaigns. Then they give out points based on how many awards each agency won. You can see why an agency with a large geographic reach would have an advantage here. They can win the award for best campaign in Germany from their German branch or the best campaign in Canada from their Canadian branch in addition to winning the best overall. Since this gives BBDO the most awards they get the highest rank.
Of course it isn't fair to say that they only won because they were the largest agency. Sure they may get to compete in the most categories for awards but they do still have to win them. There is also a reason that they are the biggest advertising agency in the world, they clearly deliver results to their customers. It is also important to keep in mind that the Gunn report is a measure of the creativity of the agency not the effectiveness of the campaign. Therefore it is not something that you can win simply by using large resources to flood the market with ads. It's the perfect combination of classic and modern advertising techniques (e.g. advertising on facebook, twitter, weblogs, ...) that really can make the difference.