Advertising agencies, design studios, PR firms and media shops wanting to enter AOY have until May 30 to state their intentions.

After Monday, May 30, the first phase will close and only those vetted and approved will be invited to move forward to submit their work for judging.

From May 30, agencies will only have 3 weeks to submit their case materials before jurors begin their deliberations.

Strategy is helping to expedite the process by vetting and giving agencies the green light to begin submitting their case materials the moment their work is approved.

Agency of the Year is an annual competition where shops across different disciplines – creative, media, digital, PR and design – vie for the title of Canada’s top shops based on a portfolio of work.

What to do now?

If interested in entering the 2022 edition, fill out this form before May 30 and state your agency’s intent to submit work.

In the form, entrants will be asked to include the (1) name of the client, (2) name of the campaign, and (3) market dates for the five (for Agency of the Year) and/or three (Media, Digital, PR, Design or Small Agency of the Year) cases they plan to submit.

The work must have launched in the 12-month period from June 2021 to June 2022. All of the campaigns have to be for different brands, cannot include self-promotional work and must be Canadian (if it’s a global campaign created here, it must have appeared in this market).

There is also a strict no double-dipping policy: agencies must submit unique campaigns for each competition. For example, an agency can’t enter the same work for a specific CPG brand in Agency of the Year and Design AOY, even if it just includes design-driven creative (like a poster or website) that was a part of the overall campaign also entered into AOY.

The entry fee ($850) is payable when the cases are uploaded and is a cost per agency for each award category, not per case.

What comes next?

Once an agency’s campaigns have been vetted and approved by the editorial team, they will be invited to submit their full written case studies and visual assets for our expert judges to review.

This year, strategy opened the submission portal at the same time as the first “intent to enter” phase so that agencies can begin uploading their full case studies as soon as they are approved. Note: Agencies should not begin uploading cases until they have been approved for entry by strategy‘s editorial team.

The submission portal will close on June 20. 

Following this phase, the cases in each category will be judged by senior Canadian agency executives and marketers to determine a shortlist of agencies, which will be announced later in the summer. The Gold, Silver and Bronze winners for each competition will be revealed this fall, and winning portfolios will once again be published in strategy‘s end-of-year magazine, continuing our long-held tradition.

To read about last year’s winners and for more extensive entry details, visit the Agency of the Year website.