This year, Adweek is not only celebrating the best ad agencies in the business but also striving to help other shops understand what makes the best of the best truly stand out.
That’s why, for the first time, Adweek has a theme for its Agency of the Year awards program: Building a Better Agency. Adweek asked each finalist across all seven categories to explain how it is building a better agency for the future.
Last year, Majority took home the title of Adweek’s Breakthrough Agency of the Year.
How we got here
Adweek invited any agency to enter (without a fee) its yearly Agency of the Year awards program by providing information about its past year and best work.
A team of Adweek editors and reporters combed through the entries and generated a list of five finalists in each category. Adweek’s internal jury deliberated over these finalists, taking into account three main factors:
- Business success (client wins and losses, revenue growth, strategy and use of technology).
- The work (a reel featuring the agency’s 10 best and most effective pieces of creative).
- Talent and ESG (creating an environment for employees to succeed through its culture and benefits, as well as advancing DEI and sustainability).
On Oct. 10, Adweek will reveal the winning agencies. Below, in alphabetical order, are the finalists for Breakthrough Agency of the Year.
Courage
In May 2022, three former Rethink partners, Dhaval Bhatt, Niki Sahni and Joel Holtby founded the shop, which is part of the No Fixed Address family of agencies. In its first year of operation, Courage inked an all-star lineup of clients, including CIBC, KFC Canada, Nescafé and KitKat.
The agency has delivered an array of campaigns for KFC Canada over the past year, spotlighting The Colonel, which often hasn’t showed up in KFC’s Canadian advertising before. What the agency doesn’t deliver, though, is Monday presentations. The agency has banned presentations internally and for clients to start the week to prevent employees from working over the weekend.
The shop has also created a number of strong purpose driven pieces for CIBC and Nescafé that celebrate immigrants and sustainability.
How it’s building a better agency: “Too many times agencies fall into the trap of treating clients like they’re scary entities that need big decks and fancy slides, when often the best work is an outcome of a conversation or a text message,” said Dhaval Bhatt, co-founder and CCO. “It’s never strategists talking to creatives or accounts to production. It’s always human to human, leading with empathy and honesty.”