It’s Christmas time – the office shuts for the holidays at lunchtime today, so it seems an appropriate time to look back on the year that’s gone.

We were warned at the start of this year that ‘maintaining the creative bar at the lofty level reached by Cog will be difficult’ (Campaign ‘school report’ 2003). Overall, we’ve kept up the standard and, some would say, surpassed it with the Honda Diesel campaign.

According to the Gunn Report we were the second most awarded agency in the world in 2004. (After BBDO Brazil – damn those Brazilians.) Most of this was down to our work for Honda, which swept the board at the world’s festivals. ‘Cog’ was named most awarded commercial of 2004 by the Gunn Report. (Honda ‘Sense’ and ‘Everyday’ were also in the top 5.) The new Diesel campaign was also named campaign of the year and TV commercial of the year by Campaign.

And we picked up a couple of golds at IPA Effectiveness, which should help show that the creativity is applied to generating commercial results for our clients.

We branched out beyond advertising and executed a number of branded content projects through our content division, Wieden + Kennedy Entertainment. These included a football magazine ( Goodbye Hoof Hello Nutmeg) and a documentary (Panna KO), both for Nike.

We created a massive online world for Aiwa that gave the brand a global showcase

On the new business front, growth was steady, with wins of Associated New Media and Wales Tourist Board, and also additional business from existing clients Honda and Revlon. We also won a place on the Unilever roster when we picked up an assignment from them.

Staff-wise, we brought in some great new people. Neil Christie joined as Managing Director and Emma Trotman (from MADE) and Julia Methold (from BBH) joined as New Business Director and Head of TV, respectively. Other new joiners included Penny Brough and Jon Tapper in account handling, and Matt Boffey in Planning. And we’ve hired two new creative teams who start in January – Kerry and Stuart from TBWA and Mark and Richard from Claydon Heeley.

By any measures, 2004 was our most successful year yet in the UK. But there’s still plenty more for us to achieve in 2005.

Onwards and sideways!