Above: the view outside Nokia House. Below: the view inside.

On Thursday evening we flew to Finland for the briefing on the Nokia global pitch. This was slightly unusual in that all six agencies who have made it through to this stage were briefed together.

Those six are BBH, DDB, JWT, Mother, a WPP combo team billed as Bates/Grey/Y&R/RKCR and your very own Wieden + Kennedy. Grey is the incumbent in the western world and Bates currently has the business in Asia. We recently won from Grey the brief to support the launch of Nokia’s flagship stores worldwide. The others have no Nokia business but lots of telecoms experience. (Confused? You will be.) BBH used to have one2one, now has the Vodafone business and recently resigned Sony Ericsson. Mother still has some of Orange (they used to have it all in the UK)and used to have Siemens, I think. JWT used to have Vodafone till BBH won it from them. RKCR has the Virgin Mobile business. And that’s all just in London. W+K Amsterdam used to have Siemens and Vodafone and W+K London works with Orange in Romania. And I’m sure DDB has some telecoms experience, possibly even with Nokia, somewhere.

Lots to play for on this one – not only a huge piece of business but also an exciting brief and an opportunity to do some great work. A very significant win for any of the agencies on the list. So, no pressure there, then.

Each agency was limited to four attendees. W+K team was Dave Luhr, Tony Davidson, Simon Summerscales and Neil Christie.

Above: Luhr and Tony.

The briefing, which was led by Jo Harlow of Nokia, was pretty comprehensive, as you might expect for a review of this size. But unlike many of these things it was actually pretty inspiring. No, really. Must be fascinating to be on the client side of a pitch like this and see what all the agencies make of it.

First part of the day – the main briefing – took place at Nokia House in Espoo, then after a tasty lunch of local delicacies like reindeer and cloudberries, we moved to a Nokia villa/chalet place by a frozen lake for Q&A sessions.

As one might have expected, it’s fairly snowy in Finland at this time of year.

Above: Simon. Below: Neil.

The W+K team made a quick dash into Helsinki to visit the Nokia flagship store…

…then it was back to the villa for ‘informal drinks’ – vodka and cranberry cocktails with the clients and all the agencies before a bus to the airport to catch the last flights out on friday evening.

By the side of the frozen lake we had noticed the remains of some Finnish creature. A rabbit? Significant symbol of something or other. Maybe.

We have a lot of work to do on this one. Next stage meetings in a couple of weeks.

Yesterday saw publication of Campaign magazine’s annual survey of the UK’s ‘top’ agencies, commonly known as the ‘school report’. For the second year in a row we scored an ‘excellent’ 8 out of a maximum possible 9 marks. Clearly, management has to take personal responsibility for that missing point. Here’s what they wrote about us:

"W+K’s reputation for creativity is well-earned but has in the past been based on work for a handful of accounts. Not before time the agency started to extend its canvas last year, bringing in significant new business including The Guardian and Lurpak butter. Add to those Cravendale milk, the Orange account in Romania and the launch of Brick-It (the first mobile phone soap series) and W+K begins to look like a more balanced operation.

Its creativity was widely recognised with awards. Its ‘St Wayne’ ad for Nike took the top honours at Campaign Posters. Meanwhile, its 2005 ‘Impossible Dream’ film for Honda won Best Commercial at the British Television advertising awards, the third consecutive year a W+K spot for the carmaker has won the prize. The spot was also won of the most highly awarded in the world in 2006, according to the Gunn Report. All very satisfying. But in many ways the agency is a victim of its own success, since anything less than a Cannes Grand Prix looks like failure.

Sustaining this creative potency will be among the major challenges for W+K during the coming year, as will leveraging this strength with more international assignments.

Another will be to draft in more digital exprtise. While W+K should be commended for the investment, most of the growth in staff last year came as a result of a general beefing up of its creative department. The agency may be spoken of in the same breath as US hotshops such as Goodby Silverstein and Crispin Porter, but it has a way to travel if it is to match them below the line as well as above it."

We knew we did a good job last year but it’s nice to see they were paying attention. Should we worry about how they rate us? One W+K staffer described a vote of approval from Camapign thus: ‘It’s like getting whacked-off by the ugliest girl in school.’

For what it’s worth, they also asked us to rate ourselves. We gave ourselves only 7 out of 9 and said, ‘Steadily getting better but much more potential for us to achieve.’