Each year Campaign magazine does its
‘school report’ evaluation of the performance of UK agencies. For some reason –
possibly to avoid indignant complaining by agencies outraged at their ranking –
Campaign don’t present their scores in league table format. But for ease of
comparison, we at W2O have done just that for the 2012 school report scores.
Media agencies have been removed from this table, as have agencies that
describe themselves as DM/direct agencies. (There are fewer and fewer of those
every year, as the distinctions between ‘direct’ and ‘digital’ become subsumed
into the catch-all designation ‘integrated’.)

9 – BBH, Work Club

8 – AMV-BBDO, AKQA, Grey, Iris, Jam, Karmarama,
Lean Mean Fighting Machine, Leo Burnett, Mother, Wieden + Kennedy

7 – BETC, Brooklyn Brothers, Creature,
CP&B, Gravity Road, Havas, Inferno, JWT, LBi, Leith, M&C Saatchi, Now,
PAA, R/GA, Saatchi & Saatchi, Sapient Nitro, VCCP

6 – 101, BMB, Brothers & Sisters, CHI
& Partners, Corner, DLKW Lowe, Krow, Leagas Delaney, McGarry Bowen,
Profero, Publicis Chemistry, TBWA, TMW, WCRS, Wunderman

5 – Agency Republic, Dare, Draft FCB, G2
Joshua, Glue Isobar, Kitcatt Nohr Digitas, MBA, O&M, RKCR/Y&R

4 – Albion, AIS, CMW, Elvis, Fallon, McCann,
Publicis

3 – Red Brick Road

Score
key 9 Outstanding 8 Excellent 7 Good 6 Satisfactory 5 Adequate 4 Below
average 3 Poor 2 A year to forget 1 Survival
in question

When you see the scores laid out like this,
it suggests that Campaign has actually been quite generous. Only one agency
merits a score of 3 or less. Only 8 score below average.

There are some interesting juxtapositions,
where agencies that appear to have had quite different years achieve the same
score. And some agencies whose work has been patchy at best have scored
surprisingly highly.

Anyway, there’s the table (above). Draw your own
conclusions.

For thoughts on their assessment of Wieden + Kennedy, see here.

Dwindling
land for farming? Meet the ‘freight farm’: a reused freight container that
grows all sorts of veg in a tiny space. Or check out Mosaic, which hooks small-time investors to clean energy projects, a bit like a facebook for solar panels. Or Bina, where Big Data is put
to work to find a cure for cancer.

A lot of these are crowd-funded, or germinated in an internetty-type environment. They beg the question: why the rise in world-saving? What's with all the online do-gooding?

Well, you
could make a vague link between techno-altruism and the ascent of
Silicon Valley, which always seemed to be at the nicer end of American capitalism
(see, for example, Google’s famous ‘Don’t be Evil’ policy).

Or you could point out that the web is all about helping people link up with other people. Webby projects might just have a tendency to altruism built in to them if they're gestated in an amniotic soup of connectivity, rather than, say, warfare. 

Maybe its simpler. Increasing connections with other like-minded types makes it easier for nice people to realise nice
ideas. Food for thought, especially in the wake of TED and SXSW. 

—–

(Thoughts courtesy of Planning Placement newbie James.)