The One Club, based in New York, and London-based D&AD are not-for-profits known for awarding top advertising around the world each year, and now they’ve joined forces to create a ranking system based on those honours.

Launching in early 2011, Pencil Rankings will award points based on One Show and D&AD wins and will rank individual agencies as well as networks based on their overall performance. A Client of the Year will also be named.

The idea to join forces first came up when the D&AD hosted a screening of the One Club film Art & Copy in London last year, explains Mary Warlick, CEO of the One Club.

‘Both organizations share the same mission of recognizing creative excellence in advertising and design, and are resolutely not for profit, channelling the resources from the awards programs back into the industry for educational and professional events,’ she says.

‘D&AD and the One Show are widely acknowledged as the most rigorous, hard-to-win shows in the world: we represent an absolute benchmark for brilliance in commercial creativity,’ says D&AD CEO Tim O’Kennedy, about why this partnership made sense for the organizations.

Both CEOs note that there was an industry demand for a ranking system ‘which shines a light on creative excellence at the highest level, based transparently on the results achieved at the two best shows in the world only,’ O’Kennedy says.

Agencies and clients will be able to search the rankings for free, and can search based on region, agency type, etc. The points system will be transparent and the methodology laid out on the website, Pencilrankings.org.

The One Show and the D&AD Awards are both included in strategy‘s Canadian rankings – the Creative Report Card – which is released in the February issue.