The Gunn Report is an annual survey that collates data from the world’s major creative awards shows to create rankings of the year’s biggest winners.

The 2011 report has just been published and there’s a piece about the results in this week’s Campaign magazine by Donald Gunn, the compiler of the report.

Campaign says, “If The Gunn Report 2011 shows us one thing, it’s that W&K needs a new trophy cabinet after its Nike and Old Spice awards haul.”

(Actually, we don’t have a trophy cabinet. Awards tend to be left lying around all over the place. I took the pic above to illustrate this point. I chose it because it happens to be the shelf near my desk, but looking more closely, I think these are actually D&AD pencils we won for Nike ‘Write the Future’.)

 Gunn points out that it was a very successful year awards-wise for Wieden + Kennedy.

“Perhaps it’s not surprising that Nike’s ‘Write the Future’ campaign topped this year’s film table. But what’s really interesting is that the ad scored the highest total of points in the history of The Gunn Report. So that’s more than ‘cog’ (also by W+K), more than ‘surfer’.  A new record has been set.”

“It follows, then that Nike was always going to do well in the advertisers table. Top of the pack, it scored the highest points total for 12 years…

“The man your man could smell like” was one of the best-known and best-loved campaigns of 2010, conquering in the film category last time round. In 2011, the Old Spice “response campaign” by W+K Portland took the top spot in the digital table.” (Old Spice also came first equal in the integrated/innovative category.)

Gunn continues, “One and the same network took the first two places in our agencies table – the first time this has ever happened. And it was a network with 20 times fewer offices than the rest. Number one was W+K (Amsterdam) and number two was W+K (Portland, New York). W+K in London and Tokyo also made the top 50. Imagine if W+K had 20 offices.”

W+K also came fourth in the digital agencies table and fifth in the agency network table.  (BBDO topped that table with 180 points across its 289 offices.)

The other night team W+K went off to the bash for the 2011 ANNAs – the awards for the best advertising in UK national newspapers. We were chuffed to pick up the main award of the night: The ANNAs Hall of Fame winner for best press campaign of the year went to our 'tangential thinking' campaign for Honda.This pan-European campaign covers Honda products and innovations across cars, power equipment, bikes and marine and aims to explain how Honda's approach to solving engineering problems leads to innovative solutions. It's all about their belief in 'the power of dreams'.

Judge Gerry Moira said, "In a newspaper full of shiny showroom cars, these ads stand out. OK, they are not burdened with having to sell low APR rates and finance packages but they exploit and explain their brand messaging with great style."

Here are some of the ads in the winning campaign.



Well done to the W+K Honda team and to our clients at Honda. Work like this just isn't possible without a great client.
We're delighted to have won this one – it's our third time of picking up campaign of the year at the ANNAs in the last few years.