This agency of the year stuff is a poser – Marketing chooses BBH (and PHD for media, as usual)

Marketing magazine in the UK has chosen BBH, Bartle Bogle Hegarty as was, as its creative agency of the year, among a long list of agencies doing all sorts of things, which BBH presumably doesn’t.

PHD wins its media agency of the year gong, which it always does.

PHD, Omnicom’s second media agency, is the most brilliant bit of agency branding ever. PHD, Pattison Horswill Durden as was, were indeed clever media types but their combination of initials served to underline the clever bit in spades. And the agency has won just about every UK media agency of the year award ever since, despite a pretty lacklustre business performance in some of those years (I agree it’s doing well now).

I’ve been to a couple of media awards recently: how on earth can you tell if the judges have made the right decision? With creative awards you can see the ads and boo, hiss or clap as the work unfolds. With media it’s with the fairies.

We won’t be giving out a media agency of the year, because how would we know?

But we have said we’ll be doing an agency of the year, ad of the year and person of the year. It’s fiendishly difficult but we press on.

So I’m going to ask my friends and colleagues Stuart Smith, Paul Simons, Giles Keeble, Jerry Judge and ‘Mountain Man’ George Parker (an Olympian selection) for their views, while sticking to mine. They may decide not to play or just be unable to make their minds up.

And apologies in advance to agencies, advertisers and, indeed, important persons in markets we don’t know as much about as we do the UK and US.

But, obviously, this is the prize everyone wants to win.