Ogilvy's unmatched creative dominance

In each of the last three years, one or other of the Ogilvy agencies (Johannesburg or Cape Town) has been named AdReview Creative Champion. Again in 2014, the accolade went to Ogilvy Johannesburg.

The group as a whole has also topped its league in a run stretching back even further - to 2011.

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The AdReview Creative Championship is unique in that it includes the South African performance across all acknowledged creative awards platforms in the world. Each platform is weighted according to the difficulty of winning them, and AdReview points are allocated accordingly. For example, a Gold Loerie is worth 110 points, which means it is more than twice as difficult to win as a Prism Gold, and half as difficult as a Cannes Lion.

The benchmark for South African awards is the Loeries, which last year rewarded 9% of their entrants with a gold, silver or bronze. The degree of difficulty is measured by the "win ratio", which is the percentage of entries that win an award.

Currently, 12 awards platforms are included. Internationally they are Cannes, D&AD, The One Show, Clio, Webbies and Midas; the local awards are the Loeries, Ad of the Year, Ad of the Month, Bookmarks, Pendorings and Assegai. In future, we will include public relations awards, as PR is becoming ever more integrated with conventional advertising.

They include a broad spectrum of disciplines, from direct marketing to digital marketing and Afrikaans-language advertising. But they do not include effectiveness awards such as the Apex, or media awards like the Roger Garlick.

But with 70 agencies ranked, this is the most comprehensive analysis available of South African commercial creativity.

In the last five years, there have been two very wide gaps between the winner and the runner-up, and three very narrow gaps. The closest race was in 2011, when Net#work BBDO beat TBWA Hunt Lascaris by 7.99%. In 2013, Ogilvy Cape Town headed off Hunt Lascaris by 8.46%. And in 2014, Ogilvy Cape was ahead of KingJames by 8.91%.

By contrast, in 2012 Ogilvy Cape beat Hunt Lascaris by 73%, and in 2010 Hunt Lascaris ousted KingJames by 305%.

But isn't it interesting that TBWA Hunt Lascaris was Number One or Number Two in four of these years? There's life in the old dog yet.