Everybody loves an award – obviously – and no-one more than WPP. And, once again, the holding company’s GroupM has won WARC’s Media 100 top gong – for the most awarded media agencies last year – for the eighth year in a row.
Mindshare and EssenceMediacom rank first and second for media networks, Mindshare New York and EssenceMediacom New York were among the top three agencies with WPP agencies responsible for nearly half of the top 100 media campaigns (drawn, presumably, from WARC’s recent Creative 100. WPP came top in that too.) Mediaplus Munich was top agency.
Trouble is, everybody knows that GroupM and its component parts (EssenceMediacom, Mindshare and Wavemaker chiefly) are struggling. WPP CEO Mark Read and newly re-installed GroupM boss Brian Lesser recently admitted as much at WPP’s recent 2024 annual results presentation. GroupM, the holding company’s media holding company, is udergoing yet another overhaul with senior execs leaving left, right and centre.
So what do media awards actually award? Chiefly it seems too be creativity and innovation; a hangover, maybe from ten or twenty years ago when so-called creativity in media was all the rage with Omnicom’s PHD becoming a big global network and planning specialists like Naked briefly making the weather. Is that still relevant amid the digital tidal wave?
GroupM’s Lesser says: “I’m immensely proud to celebrate eight straight years at the top of WARC’s Media 100 with everyone at WPP and GroupM. We love the work we get to do for our clients, and we’ll continue building creative, competitive and future-forward solutions that help them connect with audiences around the world. Congrats to our teams, clients, and partners on a well-earned win.”
Chief client officer Adam Gerhart says: “As the media landscape rapidly evolves, WARC captures the breadth of what our industry is capable of – a collective view of innovation and ingenuity across commerce, technology, creative and data. We’re thrilled to have two of GroupM’s networks in the top three, and two-thirds of the top ten from our global agencies. Congratulations to Mindshare as the #1 Global Media Network of the WARC 100, and to EssenceMediacom and Wavemaker for the incredible work.”
In the Sir Martin Sorrell era WPP set out single-mindedly to win more awards than anyone else, which it did (as it was by some distance the biggest then it’s not that surprising.) Did it (and does it) spend more time, effort and money on entries than the others? Media awards these days require reams of data as, increasingly do creative ones.
WARC owner Ascential, now part of Informa, has a fair old stranglehold on the ad awards business – it also runs the Effies for ad effectiveness and, of course, the Cannes Lions which awards both creative and media (and much else these days.) Winning new business in media doesn’t in itself make you more creative or award-worthy but WPP is currently lagging Publicis and Omnicom in media, even Dentsu in terms of net new business.
So, at the very least, there’s a dislocation here which WARC might address.
