It’s time to gather round, put your thinking hats on and plot your shop’s way to the Agency of the Year podium. Strategy is officially kicking off its marquee competition, asking Canada’s big and small creative, media, design, digital and PR firms to register to enter the 35th edition.

As in previous years, the program begins with agencies registering the names of the campaigns they intend to enter (no case write-ups or visual assets are required – yet) before May 16.

Agency of the Year is an annual competition where agencies across different disciplines vie for the title of Canada’s top shops based on a portfolio of work.

What to do now?

Register: Starting on Wednesday, agencies will need to add case information to the AOY campaign uploader before May 16 in order to register to enter the program.

In it, they will register the (1) name of the client, (2) the name of the campaign, and (3) the dates when the campaign was in market, 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 in full.

As always, the work must have launched in the 12-month period from June 2023 to June 2024. 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 brand in both 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.

When entering work for two or more brands under the same parent company, the brands must be from different categories. For example, an agency may enter work for PepsiCo’s Doritos and Tropicana brands. However, it can’t enter work for two brands of the same category – for example, a campaign for Bud and work for Stella Artois cannot be entered into the same category, as both are AB-InBev beer brands.

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?

Submit: 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.

The submission portal will open at the same time – today – as the first “register 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. It is recommended that agencies register to enter as soon as possible so as to avoid delays.

The submission portal will close on June 7. 

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.