Suntory’s Lucozade has made its choice as UK creative agency of the year, choosing adam&eveDDB ahead of Lucky Generals, Droga5 and Mother after departing ten-year incumbent Grey.
It’s an interesting choice: adam&eve is undergoing a transition following the departure of founders James Murphy, David Golding, Ben Priest and Jon Forsythe but, so far anyway, the transition seems successful with Tammy Einav and Matt Goff sharing the CEO duties and Richard Brim overseeing creative.
Its work so far this year has ranged from average (Halifax) to outstanding (Marmite) but it’s a very big agency these days and the combination of mostly good work with all the resources advertisers now want is compelling.
It’s what Grey used to offer in the Nils Leonard/Chris Hirst/David Patton era. This should be a worry for WPP CEO Mark Read whose heavily revamped agency line-up – including VMLY&R, Wunderman Thompson and Ogilvy as well as Grey, is not making that many big pitches let alone winning them.
There’ll be other contenders for UK agency of the year as well as this lot: Wieden+Kennedy was preswumably precluded from pitching for Lucozade because of the infinitely bigger Coca-Cola, Nils Leonard’s Uncommon has had a good year as has, against the odds, Engine.
But A&E is always there or thereabouts, no mean achievement in 2019 given the changes.
