A previous winner on four occasions, TBWA SA was the agency group in 2001 that most convincingly demonstrated all-round strength in the three areas of consideration for this award. Though it didn't lead in all the criteria, it combined growth, creative performance, business development and some of the most high-profile account gains of the year to turn in a winning performance.
Its income grew by almost 19%, a figure that would have been satisfying even in a good year - especially for an agency so large. But at a time when the industry is virtually stagnant, this was a figure that impressed, even though it was beaten by two smaller agencies in the large-agency category - J Walter Thompson's 33% and Y&R Gitam's 76%.
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(The latter was the result of a merger of two almost equally large agencies, and their combined income was actually below that of the previous year).
Carnivore restaurant
The TBWA group as a whole again topped the creative awards table. Hunt Lascaris, the lead agency of the group, was placed second to The Jupiter Drawing Room, and Gavin Reddy, which was listed separately on the table, was placed fifth. But here, too, the TBWA group could not lay claim to the kind of dominance it has enjoyed in the past.
Relative to size, the creative star of the year was The Jupiter Drawing Room, which did particularly well at international awards events, though less well at the Loeries. Jupiter's performance in print advertising at Cannes and the leading American events earned it the accolade as the world's leading print advertising agency for 2001.
Wonderbra, BMW C1 motorcycle, BMW 3-Series Compact . . . selling with style
The development of the Hunt Lascaris business was significant. The less publicised part of it was the internal evolution of the company from a narrowly focused ad agency into a group offering a more rounded marketing communications platform.
Hunt Lascaris has been an aggressive user of one of the network's most important tools, the "disruption" mechanism developed by international chairman Jean-Marie Dru. This allows the agency and its clients to re-examine critically preconceived notions that often dictate attitudes and perceptions about brands, and in the process to throw up original brand promises.
It has also developed a philosophy of "fusion", a process in which all the communications elements are marshalled around a single end, not of advertising but of business-building ideas.
A new joint venture with PricewaterhouseCoopers called Centre of Alternative Thinking has been set up to try to build the brand strategy process by combining what the consultancy does well, the process, with the agency's core offering, creative ideas.
One of the agency's most high-profile developments was the sale of a 25% stake to Cyril Ramaphosa's Millennium Investment Corp. This did not earn universal approval, with particular opprobrium coming from those who feel that internal empowerment (advancement of previously disadvantaged people within the agency) is more important than a celebrity sale of equity. Nevertheless, such an arrangement has become part of the ground rules for doing business in SA, and it has to be acknowledged, even if not always praised.
It certainly took the agency across the assumed but undefined threshold that qualifies for government business, and as a result Hunt Lascaris was able to win such landmark pitches as SA Tourism and SABC. TBWA Gavin Reddy, which operates as a separate agency under the TBWA umbrella but is included in the group's financial figures, also won the Edgars account, an R80m chunk of business. The total annualised client expenditure of new accounts won was a shade under R300m.
The group is reporting for the first time as TBWA SA, but it is essentially the same group that previously reported as TBWA Hunt Lascaris. It comprises 11 operational companies:
- The Large Agency category includes nine agencies or groups with fee and commission income of more than R45m.
