Our OFF-ON pilot launched 4 weeks ago. Here are our latest results:

Prior to launch, our average energy consumption was 16,048 watts.

Over the past 4 weeks, our average consumption has been 14,083 watts.

Which is a decrease of 12.2%.

If we keep that up over the next year, we could save £3,600 – far more than the target required to light Cheryl's 4 classrooms and kitchen (£2,500), allowing us to light up their dormitories as well. 

Whilst things are definitely going in the right direction, there are a couple of things we haven't quite nailed:

1. Turning off lights in the main seating areas

It's hard to know which switch turns off which lights on the big blocks of switches, so we've put diagrams up next to the switches. Hopefully that'll make a bit of a difference.

2. Unplugging computers at the end of the day

Most laptops are left on and charging over night. Rather than installing a system that turns all computers off automatically at night, we're hoping that with a bit more work people will start doing it of their own accord. Things were looking up on Friday night, so maybe we're moving in the right direction.

We presented the results to-date and this short edit from our trip to Cheryl's at our all-agency meeting last week:

The illegible scan above (click to enlarge) is from this week's Campaign magazine. It's their annual listing of the UK's top 50 agencies by income. The numbers are mostly for 2009, which is the most recent info that's publicly available. The table shows that W+K London has risen 8 places from number 20 to number 12. Our income grew by 23.4% year on year. Every other agency in the top 20 (other than Saatchi and Saatchi, which grew by 4%) saw a decline in income during that period and many agencies were badly hit by the recession, with a double digit decline. I was surprised to see that this shows us as being larger than agencies like Grey, Euro RSCG, CHI, TBWA and WCRS. I guess that's because UK listings tend to look at size by billings (ratecard UK media spend of accredited clients) whereas this table shows actual reported revenue. Using billings is a relic of the days when agencies made their money from media commission on 'above the line' advertising. These days looking at billings is pretty useless as an indicator of agency performance. 

Given that this data is a year old now, it's a snapshot of a time already long gone the rankings for 2010 will no doubt be different again. But it's sobering to see just how brutal the 2009 recession was for the UK ad industry.