The Agency of the Year award was the brainchild and initiative of Clive Webster, senior partner and founder of Objectivity, South Africa's only specialist perception measurement and management firm. This award recognises The Jupiter Drawing Room Cape Town for having demonstrated excellence and outstanding performance in the achievement of client objectives and return on investment (ROI).
This move away from the usual yardsticks of billing and creativity as the sole measures of agency performance is significant and was precisely what Webster had in mind when he took his idea to the MFSA.
Webster elaborates: "To merely generate creative advertising is no great accomplishment if you don't achieve a quantifiable return on investment for your client. We've all seen ads that move and inspire us, but can't remember which brand was being promoted or what point they were making. In effect then, there was no point to these ads, besides perhaps creativity for its own sake.
"So, to encourage a culture of accountability among agencies, towards their clients and their budgets, we (Objectivity and the MFSA) agreed this award would recognise ROI and creativity in equal parts, and that the winner would be the agency with the highest score in both categories, as measured by their clients and peers, respectively."
A more in-depth look at the evaluation process demonstrates that the client-driven performance evaluation was based on the independent perception audit conducted by Objectivity in producing its annual Advertising Agency Performance Profiles. It also reveals that the ratings extracted from the profiles were those focusing on ROI. The peer-driven creativity evaluation, in turn, was based on whether or not an agency had been selected as a finalist in any of the Loerie Creative Advertising categories.
Webster concludes: "The stringent evaluation criteria applied to determine the winner of this award are a clear indication of how great an achievement this win is for The Jupiter Drawing Room Cape Town. Hats off to them for demonstrating that theirs is more than just a creative shop, but also an agency capable of converting strategy into effective and creative advertising, and so delivering a return on their clients' investments and being the first to win this prestigious award."
Kevan Aspoas, Managing Director of The Jupiter Drawing Room (South Africa) Cape Town adds: "A client's rating of its agency is one of the most important measures of an agency's success. The fact that our two The Jupiter Drawing Room (South Africa) agencies beat off some truly formidable competition makes this an extremely satisfying award to have won."
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