Speaking Of The ‘Ad-volution’…

1
3033

By Larry Coffman

Speaking of the “ad-volution” (see links to earlier posts below) check out the latest listings of the Puget Sound Business Journal’s list of top Advertising Agencies of 2019—compared with 2018—just one year earlier. Most everyone in our marcomm community considers the PSBJ lists the gold standard of agency ranking, based on gross advertising income. And congrats to CMD (Creative Media Development) Seattle for ascending from No. 8 to No. 1! Its leading clients include Microsoft, Banner Bank and Precor. Randy Woloshin heads up the office here for the Portland-based agency.

And out of curiosity, I dug through my files and found the Book for 2005, too, to get a broader picture of the evolution of the local ad-agency business.  Here are side-by-side listings for the three years, followed by some observations:

           2005                                  2018                                   2019

1.   Publicis in the West               Hacker Agency                   CMD Seattle
2.   Avenue A/Razorfish               Garrigan Lyman Group        Conversion Logix
3.   Sedgwick Road                     WongDoody                        Avenge Digital
4.   Horton, Lantz & Low              Cole & Weber                     The Marketing Practice
5.   WongDoody                          GreenRubino                      Garrigan Lyman Group
6.   Stevenson Advertising           DNA                                   GreenRubino
7.   Garrigan Lyman Group          Copacino + Fujikado            Copacino + Fujikado
8.   Foot Cone & Belding              CMD Seattle                       Touch Worldwide
9.   Hawkeye/Cohesion                Conversion Logix                Strum Agency Inc.
10. Vestcom Northwest                Stevenson Advertising        DNA
11. remerinc                               Hunt Marketing Group        Hunt Marketing Group
12  Hadley Green Creates            Williams-Helde                   BlackWing Creative
13. The Brownstein Group            Hey,                                 Purdie Rogers
14. BBFM/Radarworks                  JayRay                             Wild Gravity
15. Weber Marketing Group          NW Polite Society              JayRay
16. Copacino + Fujikado                                                      Hydrogen Advertising
17. Stanton & Everybody                                                     ShiftUp
18. Destination Marketing                                                    NW Polite Society
19. DNA
20. Palazzo Intercreative
21. Hodgson/Meyers
22. Bradner Communications
23. Williams-Helde
24. Hydrogen Advertising
25. Worktank
Observations:
  • The PSBJ norm is Top 25 to 50—but the Advertising Agencies list stopped at 15 in 2018 and 18 in 2019.
  • Missing—in just one year, from 2018 to 2019—are Hacker Agency, WongDoody, Cole & Weber, Hey and Stevenson Advertising.
  • The highest reported gross advertising income total was Hacker Agency’s $53 million in 2018—prior to becoming independent. Many years, the top billers would not disclose their financials.
  • As noted earlier, DNA, Copacino + Fujikado and GreenRubino are the three “winners” in what we called the Ad-volution Survival Sweepstakes.
  • The 800-pound gorilla, of course, is Amazon’s in-house agency, which would top the list by millions, if they were eligible to be included.
  • The increase in the number of in-house agencies, plus the move to a more project-based—rather than agency of record—approach have had a clear impact on local agencies.
P.S. I’m waiting to hear from the PSBJ list-maker on: 1) the whereabouts of WONGDOODY, WundermanThompson (which absorbed Cole & Weber) and William-Helde from last year’s list; and 2) why she could identify only 18 agencies to list, when the normal minimum is 25?

 

SHARE

1 COMMENT

  1. The revenue numbers in the list are self-reported. If agencies don’t report their revenue then they don’t get included on the list. The reduced number of participants is because fewer agencies are reporting. It would be interesting to see the revenue numbers from your 2005 list. My guess is that the agencies in the top 5 have significantly higher revenue than the agencies from 2019.

Comments are closed.