Score: 5
Last year: 4
How the agency rates itself: 6
Crispin Porter & Bogusky London had a rocky 2016 – eight of the 12 accounts it held last January had disappeared a year later.
The MDC agency ended the year by resigning its biggest client, Turkish Airlines, whose global account was worth £4.2m in UK media billings and provided about 10% of the agency’s income in 2016.
At least the silver Entertainment Lion CP&B won at Cannes for the "Batman v Superman" campaign was something to remember after an apparently torrid agency/client relationship.
Good news, then, that CP&B managed to reel in ten new accounts – the highlights being Malaysian holiday destination Resorts World Genting and Betstars – and its staff swelled by more than a third. Winning the Boots Botanics brand was a welcome end to 2016 and the contract is being honoured despite Boots’ parent’s WPP deal.
Dave Buonaguidi, the Karmarama and St Luke’s co-founder who joined in 2015, is moulding CP&B’s creative department. The hiring of Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO’s Hugh Tarpey in May as head of integrated design shows how important Buonaguidi considers the discipline to be. CP&B also raided Cheil UK for its Samsung creative directors Dave Newbold and Jim Eyre. Elsewhere, strategy specialist and entrepreneur Nicole Frost joined as head of planning following Chris Chard’s promotion to international chief strategy officer.
CP&B’s Hotels.com ads were a particular delight on the work front, from the clever "Alreet pet", which made fun of skippable online ads, to the wonderfully wacky Christmas chatbot game. Chief executive Richard Pinder will hope for more of that in 2017.
How the agency describes its year in a tweet
There are far better things ahead than any we leave behind. CS Lewis.
Score key: 9 Outstanding 8 Excellent 7 Good 6 Satisfactory 5 Adequate 4 Below average 3 Poor 2 A year to forget 1 Survival in question