The Won Report is an annual survey of the world’s “best” DM, as measured by the quantity and quality of awards won.

In the rankings, where agencies have the same number of points but are ranked differently, the ranking is made on the quality of awards won. Where a country has more than one show, the Won Report will choose that which most honours creativity.

For a campaign to feature in the Top 20, say, it will almost certainly have won major international awards – such as Cannes, the Caples or the ECHOs, plus prizes in semi-global awards such as LIAA, EPICA, D&AD, New York and so on, as well as awards closer to home.

So, “LynxJet”, which is a clear winner as Best of the Best in 2006, won the Grand Prix at ADMA, the Australian Direct Marketing awards, the Henry Hoke Award at the ECHOs and was narrowly pipped to the Grand Prix at Cannes, picking up a Gold instead.

These are just the direct marketing awards. Not included in the Won Report analysis is the Grand Prix Lowe Hunt also won at Cannes for Media, nor the Gold for Sales Promotion. The campaign also picked up additional gongs around the world for press and TV.

The Number Three campaign, “Cameraphone” is similar in that it too won many other awards in categories beyond direct marketing. And the Number Seven campaign, “Wrong Job”, also picked up trophies in poster advertising and ambient.

Advertising agencies have the fireworks

These three winners have all been produced by agencies that probably think of themselves as “above the line”. So, what do we learn from them?

The first thing is that direct marketing is becoming ever more difficult to categorise. What, exactly, is, and is not, a direct idea?

Secondly, when it comes to creative bravura, the traditional agencies still seem to have all the fireworks. Mainly because they prefer to have television at the heart of their thinking.

Perhaps television is the wrong word to use. “Sisomo” is the rather inelegant word created by Saatchi’s Kevin Roberts to describe video when it puts in an appearance on PC’s, on mobiles and on screens of every shape and size from ATMs to digital poster sites.

Certainly video is more prevalent in this year’s Won Report than ever before, with virals also forming an important component of ‘Milkoholics’, ‘24: The Game’, ‘Serendipity’ and ‘Whinging Poms’.

In other words, six of the top ten campaigns want their target audience to look at a film of some sort.

They want to tell a story. They want an emotional response. And therein lies the big shift in direct marketing. It used to be that response was an action, a coupon completed, a telephone number called, a website accessed, an order placed, a sale made.

Direct marketing was once explained to me as the shopping experience in an envelope. The message on the outer is like the guy on the street holding the sign, ‘Golf Sale’ or whatever. Inside, the cover of the leaflet is the shop window. The inner pages show you more of the goods, in close-up. The letter is the shop assistant talking to you personally.

Very rational stuff. So when you buy that cashmere pullover, say, from Jolly Jumpers, they are selling you a pullover. They are not selling you Jolly Jumpers.

Drinking the pack

You’ve spotted it, I know. Brands can be nurtured and grown using direct marketing techniques. OgilvyOne in Kuala Lumpur have grown the brand share of a drink that’s black and tastes faintly of Marmite through brilliant segmentation analysis and clever creative work.

In the UK beer market, it’s now a cliché to say that consumers drink the advertising. In Malaysia, they are drinking the DM.

For LynxJet, direct marketing was useful in sustaining the joke and maintaining a presence. The response required was  laddish laughter.

Fair enough, this is an advertising agency at work. Most DM agencies have tighter commercial controls attached to every brief they take on.

And yet, Story’s work for Glenmorangie is traditional DM in every way, only every piece of communication is underpinned by a very strong sense of the brand.

What happened was this: at the distillery in Scotland, someone mixed a small amount of ordinary whisky with a large quantity of Ardbeg, an expensive single malt. Glenmorangie, owners of the brand, were looking at an expensive write-off. Story, their agency in Edinburgh, however, came up with a solution.

This, they declared, was a happy accident. This blend of 99% Ardbeg and 1% Glen Moray we will call Serendipity and, for what it is, we are pricing it ridiculously.

The key part of Story’s story is that they have built up a relationship around the world with over 31,000 people – members of the Ardbeg Committee. The creative idea was to seek their forgiveness for the mistake. Result, one mailing averted financial disaster.

Earning forgiveness

That’s what powerful brands mean. They mean forgiveness when you need it. Remember Persil Power? The new product actually destroyed fabric fibres. It could have been calamitous but Unilever withdrew the product, apologised and were relieved to see barely a blip on their bottom line results.

If DM was once all about prices it is now about values.

Well, the award-winning work is. The stuff we see in shows. The stuff we actually get through our letter-boxes is still about numbers. 0%APR for 3 months, etc.

The curiosity is that many direct marketers seem to use DM as a broadcast medium – the credit card companies, for instance. They trawl far and wide and appear happy with 0.2% conversion rates. Forget the fact that 99.8% of all people mailed will have feelings towards the brand ranging from hatred to total lack of interest.

Meanwhile, the traditional exponents of broadcast advertising are turning to DM because it can do better what television used to do: build emotional bridges between brands and consumers.

An example of this is the UK”s Department of Transport ‘Cameraphone’ commercial shot on a mobile ‘phone to be viewed on mobile ‘phones.

In summary, DM continues to become an important brand-building tool, used in new ways to encourage new sorts of response.

How does 2006 stack up?

Is the work better than in 2005 or 2004?

Hmmm.  Fred Koblinger, Cannes jury president in 2005 and Proximity’s very own guru, remarked that we are hard to satisfy in the DM business. We expect quantum leaps in creativity to occur each year. Of course, they don’t. Look at the automotive industry. Quantum leaps happen every decade or so. Four wheel drive; the SUV; the folding metal roof. There are new ideas at every motor show but the ideas that change everything, well, they are rarer.

So it is with communications. In 2003 there were two BIG campaigns.

BMW.films.com changed the way everyone thought about advertising on the web and its repercussions are still echoing across the industry.

And the Jim Beam campaign from Y&R Australia showed what integration could look like when you have a powerful, engaging idea. Was it an ad campaign? Was it direct marketing? Was it sales promotion? Yes, yes and yes. And without it LynxJet may never have happened the way it did.

So, in 2006, is there anything as inspiring as Jim Beam?

‘Cameraphone’, perhaps. Until now, few mainstream agencies have wrapped their brains around the mobile as a communications device. Leo Burnett have shown us it is a screen. And you can show movies on a screen, tell stories, create connections. Build brands.

The universal planner

Otherwise 2006 looks like the year of the insight.

LynxJet’s insight was that between 18 and 22, many young Aussies travel the world. It’s a rite of passage. And they fantasise about the coming-of-age experiences they will have, starting with the flight out.

OgilvyOne’s insight with Purina was in noticing how cat-owners anthropomorphise their pets. This allowed them to talk about a serious subject, lactose intolerance, in a way that made sense and, in the context of cats, was amusing. Milkoholism. And so on.

The arts of planning seem more apparent in 2006 than in previous years. Creative people often bemoan planners but the truth is, a good planner is as creative as anyone in the agency. It is the idea before the idea that creates the platform off which the creative people can do their best.

This is the same for creatives in Makati as it is in London, in Sydney or in Singapore.

And that is the final remark to make about The Won Report 2006. Great work is happening all over the world.

Perhaps the star agency is Arc, Kuala Lumpur, with two campaigns in the world’s  Best Ten. If UK agencies thought they had the handle on creativity, as once they did, they need to think again.

Asia Pacific is where all the most interesting ideas are happening, with M&C Saatchi in Sydney, Saatchi & Saatchi, Singapore and OgilvyOne in Kuala Lumpur also producing stellar stuff.

Unfair on small countries

There is a bias in The Won Report, which I can’t do anything about. Most of the major awards schemes favour the English-speaking countries. There are more of them, for starters. The Clios, New York, The One Show, Mobius, The Andys, the ECHOs, The Caples…are all American.

Cannes demands all its submissions to be in English and there is no doubt this deters some agencies in smaller markets from entering their best work.

This is a pity. Campaigns like Proximity Prague’s “Hurt Me” doll for charity FOD would do well in The Won Report.

The Golden Drum Awards in Slovenia really should widen to include direct marketing. And there is a real opportunity for someone to create a regional awards show in Scandinavia, incorporating Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway.

Agencies like Kunde and Co in Copenhagen and MRM Partners in Oslo really ought to be featuring in The Won Report, and they’re not.

Which makes it intriguing to note that there is no American work whatsoever in the top thirty campaigns and only 2 US agencies in the Top 50. When it comes to digital creativity, however, there is a completely different picture. American agencies lead the world – with  Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Miami, and Goodby Silverstein, San Francisco, in particular showing how traditional advertising agencies are best placed to harness the power of the internet on behalf of their brands.

The implications for digital agencies are clear. Move upstream or become marginalised as mere production companies. 

One thing is certain. 2007 will be fascinating to watch. And the 2007 Won Report, which will be published in December this year, before the year has collapsed in a heap, will be there to record it all.