- June 23, 2021
- Posted by: Stratford Team
- Category: Business
Cheerful freelance team celebrating winning a trophy at casual office.
getty
The 2021 Cannes Advertising Festival takes place this week and the hype machine is in overdrive. I was thinking of the significance of award shows when I saw last week that trade publication Ad Age published its 2020 A-List (In June!) The list was created a few years ago to highlight the best agencies on Madison Avenue. It now seems that practically every agency in the U.S. gets a mention. I’m exaggerating, but not by much.
Coming up with the list seemed to be a matter of no-matter-whatism, as 2020 was a bad year in particular for creativity and not one single agency shined. There’re two fundamental problems with publishing this list. First, the criterion for inclusion is arbitrary and the “jury”, ironically, lacks true inside knowledge of the agencies. An agency PR campaign can be the deciding factor for a place on the list, not the quality of the work…
