Agency rating Jung von Matt/Limmat, Publicis and Wirz Werbung are the best Swiss agencies. This ranking was determined by the advertising market survey of advertising clients.
500 advertising clients received mail from Media Research Group at the beginning of the year. 164 of them completed the questionnaires and returned them. More than half of all large advertising clients (56.4%) work very often with an advertising agency, according to the study. Another quarter (27.6%) still does so frequently. Only 6.7 percent of the clients do not use an advertising agency. Before this background it surprises that only two of three clients (67%) want to or can judge at least one of the 20 queried advertising agencies. 17 percent of the clients, who nevertheless work quite intensively with an advertising agency, did not want to comment on the quality of their agency's services. Nevertheless, in absolute figures, practically the same number of clients gave their verdict on advertising agencies (see box) as media companies recently did in the Media Trend Award of the Media Trend Journal (MTJ 9/03).
Since the respondents had been expressly asked to evaluate only those advertising agencies whose performance they knew from their own experience, it is obvious that the case numbers of the individual agencies are relatively low. No agency received more than 56 assessments. The agency with the fewest mentions received just 14 evaluations. On average, the 20 advertising agencies surveyed were each rated 29.2 times.
Only 18 advertising agencies met the minimum requirement of at least 20 entries. Consequently, only the results of these 18 advertising agencies are shown in the Media Research Group's 2003 advertising market study.
In addition to the decisive overall impression, creativity, strategy and advice were also evaluated. Remarkable: Despite the large number of responses, there is no clear winner in the overall impression. The two best advertising agencies, Jung von Matt/Limmat and Publicis, scored exactly the same, except for two decimal places, namely 7.79 points.
Clear rules of the game
There is one difference, however, between the two first-place finishers: Jung von Matt/Limmat received 56 mentions, Publicis only 38. And there is another difference between the two: Jung von Matt/ Limmat also comes out on top in the three individual categories of strategy, consulting and creativity. Publicis has to be content with two second places and one third place (creativity). However, the rules of the game clearly state that the winner is the advertising agency that achieves the highest quotient - determined from the sum of all scores and the number of mentions.
Wirz Werbung can also be pleased about a very good overall impression among the major clients. With 7.60 points from 40 entries, Wirz is well ahead of the next two agencies, which are separated from each other by only a few hundredths of a point in fourth and fifth place: Advico Young & Rubicam (7.20 points with 50 mentions - second most of all advertising agencies) and Lesch+Frei (7.18 points with 22 mentions). Lowe, in sixth place, is the only advertising agency to have an above-average overall impression, but to fall short of the average in all three individual performances, albeit very narrowly in some cases. The situation is just the opposite at Seiler DDB: the agency's overall impression is below average with 5.9 points, but it is above average in all individual performances.
In the individual creativity ranking, first place goes to Jung von Matt/Limmat, with the highest score in the entire survey of 8.2 points. Weber Hodel Schmid follows very closely in second place with 8.1 points. In third place for creative performance is Publicis with 7.9 points. This top trio clearly sets itself apart from the advertising agencies that follow: There is a larger gap between third and fourth place than between fourth and tenth place.
The average score of all advertising agencies for creative performance is 6.75, which is significantly higher than the average score for overall impression (6.41) and for the other individual services of consulting (6.36) and strategy (6.32). The high average score indicates that agencies do their homework well when it comes to creativity. In addition, 10 out of 18 advertising agencies are above average, which proves that creative performance overall is not as weak as is repeatedly criticized.
In terms of creativity, the clients differentiate most strongly between the individual agencies: the difference between the highest grade (8.2) and the lowest grade (4.8) is 3.4 points here. The highest score is therefore 70 percent higher than the lowest. The clients' verdict on creativity is thus significantly less homogeneous than that on overall impression, where the difference in score between the highest (7.79) and lowest (5.1) is only 2.69 points. For consulting, the difference is 2.1 points, and for strategy, 3 points.
Creativity is not everything
However, the good assessment of creativity cannot always be transferred to the overall impression that the clients have of the advertising agencies. Only 6 of the 10 agencies with an above-average score for creativity are also in the top half of the table for overall impression. Even Weber Hodel Schmid is in the bottom half in terms of overall impression, despite its brilliant result for creative performance.
In the strategy category, in contrast to the other three categories, there is a clear break between the top two advertising agencies: Jung von Matt/Limmat is in the lead with a lead of 0.39 points and a score of 7.8, followed by Publicis and Wirz with 7.41 each and Advico Young & Rubicam with 7.40 points.
The ranking for consulting is exactly the same: here, too, Jung von Matt/Limmat takes first place with 7.5 points. The next two advertising agencies, Publicis and Wirz, come quite close; they each score 7.44 points and thus end up in joint second place, as they did for strategy. Behind the top trio, the largest gap of the entire survey opens up: Advico Young & Rubicam follows in fourth place, 0.64 points behind.
The scores for consulting leave a slightly ambivalent impression. The difference between the best and worst score for this individual service is only 2.1 points. This result sometimes indicates that most clients have a less clear picture of the consulting.
* Walter Weder is co-owner of the Media Research Group and initiator of the advertising market study.
The survey modeThe best advertising agency 2003 was determined on the basis of the evaluations of 164 clients. In March, they responded to a written request from the largest 500 clients to answer these questions: What is your overall impression of the following advertising agencies and how do you rate their performance? The criteria:
1. overall impression. 2. creativity. 3. strategy. 4. consultation. Respondents were asked to give each advertising agency whose services they had used their own
experience know, for each performance area a grade between
1 and 10 (1 = extremely poor; 10 = exceptionally good).
The 20 largest Swiss advertising agencies were to be judged. The best advertising agency was the one that achieved the best overall impression. The individual performances only served to determine the proof, on which
their overall impression can be attributed. In addition, the selection of the
The survey was not conducted on the basis of customer lists, and the responses were not checked to determine whether they came from a customer or non-customer. The survey was conducted by Media Research Group in Zurich. (WW)
Currently doing the best job from the point of view of the advertising clients: Dominique von Matt (Jung von Matt/Limmat), Fredy Collioud (Publicis) and Jost Wirz (Wirz Werbung).
Jung von Matt/Limmat was the only advertising agency to convince the majority of advertising clients in terms of creativity, strategy and consulting.
What the ranking also expresses is that Zurich is and remains the advertising capital of Switzerland.
Walter Weder*
