MOST winners: Vizeum Cape Town and Times Media Group

CEO and founder of Wag the Dog Publishers, Sandra Gordon, masterminded the event.

The media owners and agencies turned out in their droves in support of this popular event. Mastermind of the event and CEO and founder of Wag the Dog Publishers, Sandra Gordon, was in black with a lime jacket and lime green socks and the mood was jovial as the Awards kicked off with some lucky draws. Then the more serious business of the awards began with the rising stars and legends.

Tanya Schreuder, Vizeum SA owner, said she did not have a clue that they would win but was very happy with the Award. "Awards are lovely and I feel very blessed. It is our great partnerships with media owners and the passion of our people who love what they do that has given us this Award."

Trevor Ormerod, general manager: Group Sales, Times Media Group, said the Award was a culmination of a lifetime's work. "This Award is a tribute to a great team that likes to innovate and work pass boundaries."

Happy Harry

In the individual Awards, Wayne Bishop, MD of PhD Johannesburg was the Media Agency Rising Star, Harry Herber, director and former group CEO of the MediaShop, the Media Agency Legend Award, and Adelaide McKelvey, Director Continental Outdoor, rest of Africa, Media owner legend. No award was given for the Media owner rising star.

Herber commented that he was very happy with the lamb, but did not think it would "braai well".

This year's MOST Awards saw a record number of participants, Freshly Ground Insights (FGI) exceeded their voting target of 6000 votes for the 102 media agencies and 110 media owner sales teams respectively.

"The MOST Awards is an industry benchmark for excellence amongst media agencies and media owners," explains Gordon.

The MOST Awards survey, commissioned by Wag the Dog Publishers and conducted by Freshly Ground Insights (FGI), asked respondents to vote against performance criteria. "It is through this formal process of media agencies and media owners communicating their respective performance priorities and expectations, that they have been able to provide better service to each other," says Brad Aigner, MD of Freshly Ground Insights (FGI).

The most important performance criterion...

This year the performance criterion considered most important to media agencies in terms of their expectations of media owner sales teams was 'knowledge of own brands and media landscape'. Significantly, this has been rated as most important in four out of six years of MOST Awards surveys. It is evident that media agencies continue to value well-trained media sales executives who are supported with relevant marketing collateral for their brands. 'Service delivery' remains a crucially important deliverable to media agencies, with this criterion having been ranked as either most important or second most important since the MOST Awards started in 2009.

From a media owner perspective, the most important performance criterion expected by media agencies was 'knowledge of client brands and the market landscape', followed by 'knowledge of the media landscape'. The former has also been rated the most important criterion every year since we began including the MOST Awards survey for media agencies.

"A recurring theme over the years has been the critical importance of having knowledgeable employees who are committed to delivering 'good old fashioned' service. From discussions with category and overall winners in previous years, it is evident that these companies have not simply paid lip-service to the need for formalised and committed training programmes for their staff," says Aigner.

"With such great competition in the media industry, and because of the gravitas that The MOST Awards results have for companies Wag the Dog Publishers and FGI decided to put extra checks and balances in place to ensure the validity, integrity and independence of the data," says Gordon.