This story appears in the November 2014 issue of strategy.
Strategy‘s 2014 Agency of the Year awards began the same way as in years prior, with an open call for Canadian agencies to submit their best campaigns from the past 12 months.
All eligible creative, media, digital and PR agencies entered with comprehensive case studies (five for AOY and three for MAOY, DAOY and PRAOY) for campaigns they had executed over the past year. From there, separate cross-industry and cross-country judging panels marked the work online and in isolation.
Each campaign for the agency, media and digital competitions was given two marks from one to 10 based on strategic insight (including impact) and creativity, while judges scored the PR agency campaigns based on the same criteria, in addition to a separate score for impact.
Judges who declared conflicts were omitted from the scoring process on the applicable cases or agencies. The top-scoring agencies in each category made up the shortlists, based on a natural drop-off point in the scoring. The MAOY jury also chose the Media Director of the Year (for which there was a tie this year).
The scores were totalled and averaged with equal weighting, and the agency with the highest final score was the winner. The shortlisted agencies, in winning order, are listed below.
AOY
Leo Burnett
Rethink
DDB
Ogilvy
John St.
Sid Lee
Taxi
BBDO
Zulu Alpha Kilo
JWT
Cossette
Lg2
Union
DAOY
John St. / Lg2 (tie)
Zulu Alpha Kilo
Proximity
JWT
Union
Grip
Tribal Worldwide
Saatchi & Saatchi
OgilvyOne Worldwide
Cundari
Cossette
MAOY
OMD
PHD/Touché
MEC
Starcom MediaVest Group
Mindshare
Cossette
Jungle Media
UM
Carat
Media Experts
M2 Universal
PR AOY
North Strategic
Narrative PR
Veritas Communications
Edelman
Strategic Objectives
MSLGroup
Argyle Communications
DDB PR
Media Profile
Environics Communications
Citizen Relations
Weber Shandwick
Photo by Ryan Walker Photography