Show Notes
Campaign's annual School Reports scrutinise and assess 80 UK agencies from across the industry, giving them each a score between 1 and 9.
Released last week, agencies across creative, media, social, digital, CRM and experiences are evaluated based on their individual history. The top mark of 9 is awarded to an agency that has had an outstanding year; 8 for an excellent year; 7 for a good one; 6 is satisfactory; 5 is adequate; 4 stands for below average; 3 is poor; 2, a year to forget and 1 warns that the shop's survival is in question.
For the last two years, no 9s were given, but this year, there were four awarded.
In this episode, Campaign's journalists discuss what the data revealed about individual agency health, how agencies fared in this year’s reports against difficult conditions and what goes into achieving a top score of 9. Premium content editor Nicola Merrifield, editor Maisie McCabe and media editor Beau Jackson join the episode hosted by tech and multimedia editor Lucy Shelley.
Further reading: School Reports 2026: Top holding companies School Reports 2026 tables: Top 100 creative agencies School Reports 2026 tables: Top 50 media agencies School Reports 2026: Top regional agencies School Reports 2026: Agency billings growth slows down amid industry challenges School Reports 2026: The end of “performative window dressing” for diversity School Reports 2026: Which agencies got the highest marks?
What is Group M? Do holding company solutions undermine agency brands? WPP launches new Elevate28 strategy with four core divisions and £500m savings
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from The Campaign Podcast
Last week was the 40th anniversary of the Media Week Awards, and we celebrated the ceremony in London with almost 1000 people in the room.
We are entering Christmas in adland which means soon some of the biggest ads of the year will drop across our TV screens, phones, billboards and more.
WPP Production opened its first global flagship office in September with an AI-powered high-tech studio in Devon’s Point, East London. Deputy creativity and culture editor Charlotte Rawlings attended the opening and gives her perspective on the facility.The opening comes as WPP’s Q2 results showed WPP Production was the only one of the holding company’s four units that reported positive growth.
What is the true balance between human spaceflight and robotic exploration when it comes to science, inspiration, and decision-making capabilities? How is space transitioning from a niche frontier to an everyday commercial workplace? What role do regulatory frameworks, such as the United Nations, the Artemis Accords, and the Astra Carta, play in keeping orbit and the lunar surface safe and sustainable? And how can the UK Government act as an "anchor customer" to bridge the commercial "valley of death" for domestic space startups?
Campaign's TV Advertising Summit took place in September, in partnership with Netflix, Sky Media and Dailymotion, questioning how the TV ad landscape has been remodelled, and what advertisers need to do to get ahead.