I don’t go to many ‘industry’ get-togethers, but when I do I’m always struck by the relentless positivity of people in this business. Even when Soho’s burning, there are sten guns in Shoreditch and hungry wolves are running wild in the streets, the happy folk of adland talk about what a great year they’ve had, how business is booming and how they’ve never been busier, ha ha. But not so much this year. Most of the people I’ve spoken to over Christmas drinks admitted that 2011 was a tough year and that 2012 looks like being a slog too. People are tired. ‘Roll on Christmas and a few days off,’ seems to be the popular sentiment. And to be honest, here at W+K we too had a tough year in 2011. After a number of years of steady and even rapid growth, 2011 saw the agency contract as a result of economic factors and the parting of ways with Nokia, which had been our largest client. Of course, we’re still optimistic here at W2O and we’re hoping for a prosperous 2012. We recognise that we’ll all have to work hard next year to achieve that success.

In the meantime, here’s a summary of the year that was 2011 for Wieden + Kennedy London.

Creative highlights

Our ‘The Milk Matters’ campaign for Cravendale launched with ‘Cats with thumbs’. This was named one of the top ten ads of 2011 by Adweek and nominated for campaign of the year by ITV and Campaign magazine.

The thing that really made this campaign special was the integration of TV and social media, with Bertrum Thumbcat facebooking, tweeting and generally getting his polydactyl paws all over the internet.

The ‘Milk Matters’ campaign continued with ‘Milk me Brian’, a spot that asked the question, ‘Who first thought to milk a cow?’

The latest execution in the ‘Good food deserves Lurpak’ campaign was called ‘Kitchen Odyssey’. This suggested that even the humble omelette could make for an epic meal if done properly. (Properly, like with Lurpak.)

The TV ad was supported by posters celebrating the greatness of simple food and a range of on-pack foils following the theme.

There were a few interesting things for Honda this year. We launched the Honda Jazz across Europe with the ‘This Unpredictable Life’ TV campaign.

The campaign also included an innovative mobile app that enabled you to interact live with the TV ad.

And we did our first ever Motorshow stand for Honda at the Frankfurt show.

Most recently we launched the Honda Experiment HTML 5 game, which has been getting lots of positive buzz online and was named FWA site of the month.

Our Kaiser Chiefs bespoke album creation thing turned the concept of an album on its head and allowed fans to create their own version of the Chiefs’ new LP ‘The Future is Medieval’ and promote and sell their version. It was named ‘Best artist promotion’ of 2011 at BT Digital Music Awards.

Kaiser Chiefs The Future Is Medieval Case History from Wieden + Kennedy London on Vimeo.

Following on from ‘Dot’, the record-breaking world’s smallest ever stop frame animation, we created for Nokia ‘Gulp’, the world’s largest ever stop frame animation, entirely shot on a Nokia N8.

You can see how it was all done here.

Our campaign to support The Guardian’s Book Season contained lots of fun and thought-provoking elements, with the Big Book Swap at its heart.

The campaign even made it onto Russian TV.

Our campaign for soft drink brand Nestea rolled out globally.

Wales Wants Piers was an innovative campaign that used social media to get the people of Wales to create a proper holiday for one man (and his girlfriend).

We wanted to help shift entrenched perceptions of Wales by acting in a different, more progressive way. This campaign aimed to open up the conversation about Wales by giving the people of Wales and lovers of Wales a platform to talk about the stuff that they do or love best.

More info here.

Loads of work done on Nike this year and a ton more in production now for 2012.

Awards

Yeah, yeah, awards, blah, blah, etc. But we entered them and won some, so here they are.

– 5 x golds at BTAA (more than any other agency, er, I think)

– Nike Write The Future topped the Creativity League Table as most awarded campaign of 2011 (including Cannes Grand Prix + 2 gold lions)

– Webbys Agency Of The Year 2011

– Blades Digital Agency Of The Year 2011

– Creative Review Agency Of The Year 2011

– Marketing Week / Engage – runner-up Agency of the Year 2011

– APG Awards 2011 – gold, silver and special award

– Campaign BIG awards – 6 silvers

New biz wins

2011 was a tough year for new business. There wasn’t much around and what there was, was harder than ever to bring in. For the first year in a long time we lost more pitches than we won. (Must try harder in 2012.) But we’re very proud of the ones we did convert. We won the business for mobile network Three.co.uk earlier this year. We also picked up the Lurpak global account. This one was particularly sweet: we lost out in the pitch a couple of years ago, so it was nice to have the client come back to us, based on our work for Lurpak in the UK, and ask us if we’d extend that relationship.

And we’ve just picked up the US account for Kraft’s gum brand Stride. This will run out of WK London and will be our first work for Kraft.

Setbacks

It was not an easy year. After a turbulent time in which they faced unprecedented competitive challenges and went through massive upheavals, we parted company with our largest client, Nokia. There’s probably a book to be written about that whole story. We did some great work with them, sometimes, but we just didn’t seem to be able to implement the across-the-board reinvention and relaunch that the Nokia brand needed. We wish all our friends at Nokia the very best for 2012 and hope that they settle with an agency partner to do the work that this brand deserves.

As a result of parting with Nokia, we had to lay off a significant number of people. That was as tough and shocking as redundancies are at any company, and it perhaps felt even more difficult at somewhere as tight-knit as W+K.

The Guardian is another client that’s been through well-publicised commercial challenges. Like Nokia, they have seen many recent changes of structure and personnel in a time when technology is causing huge upheaval for their business. One result of this was a brand relaunch project that they decided to brief out. We held on after the first pitch, but a second pitch was called immediately after the first and we lost out that time round. That was a blow, I must admit.

Optimism

2011 is pretty much done. It wasn’t totally an ‘annus horribilis’ but it certainly wasn’t an ‘annus mirabilis’. Economic forecasts suggest that, despite the Olympics, 2012 will be another commercially challenging year. But difficult times are the times in which brands rethink what they’re doing and look to agencies for fresh ideas and new approaches from which to gain competitive advantage. We just need to make sure we are smart and responsive so as to take advantage of these opportunities when they arise. So, here’s to a happy Christmas and a prosperous 2012.

Have a good holiday break. See you back here again in the new year, rested, refreshed and ready for whatever 2012 holds, with an optimistic attitude, of course.