Creative and strategic intelligence service Contagious has revealed its 2021 Contagious Pioneers list, the annual round-up of the agencies that consistently set the standard for creativity, innovation and excellence in marketing.
Following in the wake of its 2020 recognition on the list, CHE Proximity has again been named among the bravest agencies in the world.
The 2021 winners (in alphabetical order) are:
- AMV BBDO, London
- CHE Proximity, Melbourne
- Colenso BBDO, Auckland
- Edelman, London
- Forsman & Bodenfors, Gothenburg
- Mindshare China
- Nord DDB, Stockholm
- Sancho BBDO, Bogotá
- Uncommon Creative Studio, London
- Wunderman Thompson, London
According to Contagious, pioneering agencies are selected through a “rigorous analysis” of campaigns featured on Contagious I/O, an online intelligence tool and database that the services says is “packed with the most innovative and effective marketing in the world”.
“Only campaigns that demonstrate the highest levels of creativity and strategic thinking are chosen for inclusion on I/O,” the service said in a statement announcing the list.
The pioneer agencies are those that had multiple campaigns featured on Contagious I/O throughout 2020 and which performed well against other metrics, including the ratio of campaigns created to the number of clients they were created for, and the nature of the coverage.
Alex Jenkins, Contagious’ editorial director, said: “Our goal is to inspire and enable Contagious creativity. As such, we set our quality threshold unashamedly high.
“We’ve got no time for the average, the bland, the forgettable, the ignorable or the ineffective. Consumers don’t want to see it and neither do we.
‘We believe that having your agency’s work featured by Contagious is to be recognised as having [produced] something creatively outstanding. And doing that consistently, across a range of clients, in a normal year is worthy of recognition. But to do that during a year that saw marketing spend delayed or cut, and huge upheaval in consumer behaviour—well, that’s genuinely remarkable.”
Jenkins added that this year’s Contagious Pioneers list is not just a form of congratulation.
She said it was also a recognition of the determination and effort of all the people that set their creative aspirations and standards to the highest level “during some of the most turbulent working conditions in living memory”.
