Team Farner wins the 2024 creative ranking

Team Farner has continuously worked its way up the creative rankings in recent years. From 10th place in 2020 to 8th place in 2021, 4th place in 2022 and 3rd place in 2023, Team Farner is now in 1st place in 2024. Two Cannes Lions, a Wooden Pencil at D&AD, one of the seven possible "Grand Prix" at the New York Festival and a total of seven Effies - these national and international awards add up to a "dream year" for Team Farner, according to Partner and Chief Creative Officer Philipp Skrabal.

What were the driving forces that unleashed creative potential in 2024? Philipp Skrabal is certain that it was and will remain technology. He sums it up like this; "We have been working intensively on the combination of creativity and digital technologies for several years now, and this is now paying off." Skrabal calls the avatar for Islam Alijaj's election to the National Councilthe personalized films for the UBS Kids Cup participants or the Winter campaign 2024 for Arosa Tourism. "These are all award-winning examples of how AI can be used to create completely new spaces for creativity."

Creative competitions create measurability.

Awards and the associated rankings are not equally valuable and relevant for all creative agencies, but Team Farner definitely sees them as a good tool for self-marketing. According to Philipp Skrabal, creative competitions create measurability. He congratulates Thjnk and TBWA on their top rankings and is happy that they can enjoy each other's success. Creativity must be practiced widely and is the best advertising for the industry (Read the winning interview with Philipp Skrabal on Markt-kom.com here).

The agency Thjnk Zurich achieved second place

With 391 points, Thjnk secured second place this year. The agency came fourth last year and topped the creative rankings in Switzerland in 2022. When asked about the best campaign of 2024, Co-Founder and Creative Director Alexander Jaggy pays tribute to the ranking winner Team Farner: "The campaign for the National Council candidate Alijaj. A creative election campaign! So it does work," he explains appreciatively.

A creative election campaign! So it does work!

Overall, Jaggy is rather sober about the awards and their meaningfulness. They are not known for their agility, they follow the money, not a vision - and that can only be reactive, according to Jaggy. Nevertheless, the creative director of Thjnk congratulates the winner Team Farner on their "brilliant and well-deserved" victory: "We feel comfortable in the wingman position on the podium. In the end, it's just a ranking, a current classification. The decisive factor is success in the market."

When asked about his agency's goals for 2025, he says: "As an agency, we set ourselves the goal of developing creative campaigns with demonstrable impact right from the start. In 2024, we had the greatest possible overlap between the ADC Switzerland creative competition and the Effie Switzerland efficiency competition. We will continue to follow this path consistently."

Third place goes to TBWA\Switzerland

In the last five years, TBWA\Switzerland has remained in the top 10 in the creative ranking. Since 2021 - with a small "slip" in 2023 - it has even been among the top 5. With 382 points, it was only just behind Thjnk in the top 3 again for the current ranking.

As with Thjnk, Team Farner's campaign for Islam Alijaj in 2024 stands out for TBWA as a whole. It's work that "gives you goosebumps and, in a positive way, also makes you a little envious. Simply because it used AI early on in an exciting and emotional way and really made a difference in society," says Creative Director Manuel Wenzel. Of course, the company is also particularly proud of the international Grand Clio for the own work "Cutcakes".

When asked about his own development, Wenzel says: "For us as TBWA, the biggest development was to have launched the first case that generated truly global PR - and that with a (fun) product we invented, the Nugget of Love. We scored international points in exciting and modern categories such as 'Creative Commerce' and 'Customer Experience'. And there was also a Gold Effie as the 'Cherry on the Cake'."

Wenzel sees the role of creative competitions in the MarCom landscape as positive. Wenzel is convinced that the more campaigns from everyday business win prizes for everyday tasks, the more relevant these competitions will also become for clients. In 2025, the agency will continue on its chosen path of winning prizes in as many different categories as possible with as many different pieces of work as possible, as this best reflects its own service portfolio. "We want to continue to be perceived as an agency that masters every discipline that is relevant to modern brand communication," he summarizes.

4th place goes to Jung von Matt Switzerland

Regarding rank 4 in the Swiss creative ranking, Christian Kies, Chief Creative Officer of Jung von Matt Switzerland, says: "Whether rank 1 or 10, we remain dissatisfied." This has been the claim since time immemorial and is now also valid here. From an international perspective, it is striking that Switzerland was only represented at the Creative World Cup in Cannes with two bronze medals and four shortlists. There is still a lot of room for improvement. However, Kies is pleased that there were many "real cases" and that the "tiresome topic of gold ideas is increasingly receding into the background."

More important than any award, however, is ensuring the popularity and visibility of the work in target group-relevant media - and beyond. "Our cases should become pop and not gold," as Kies succinctly puts it. In order to further raise the creative level in 2025, the team will be enriched with additional international talent, new unseen production partners will be added and the synergies of the international Jung von Matt network will be utilized. To summarize: "Zurich will soon be mentioned in the same breath as London or Amsterdam as a creative location."

Rank 5 for Publicis Groupe Switzerland

"Back from the brink." With these words, ECD Rob Hartmann comments on the fifth place for Publicis Groupe Switzerland, which collected 182 points in 2024. Their award formula is to continue to combine innovative ideas with measurable impact and to address socially relevant topics in an authentic way. Team Farner's "Making History" campaign for Islam Alijaj also stood out for Hartmann. "Creative history was written here," he is convinced. For the year 2025, Hartmann continues to see the need to uphold the "courage to be creative" "in order to be successful in today's communications landscape."

Strong top 10

Strong performances were also achieved in ranks 6 to 10 in the 2024 award year. In 6th place with 162 points is Dept. The agency network was the big winner of the national "Best of Swiss Apps" award, where it took home the title of "Master of Swiss Apps" in addition to numerous gold, silver and bronze awards.

Creative competitions are important. For comparability and visibility.

Wirz, in 7th place, is an old acquaintance in the top 10, although the agency had already announced last year that it would focus more on its clients than on awards - an aspect of its reorientation towards becoming a "Creative Business Partner".

Sir Mary took 8th place with 133 points. Executive Creative Director Adrian Merz explains that 2024 was a year like any other in terms of awards and submissions and emphasizes that the agency only participates very selectively. Creative awards are still a "sporting competition between ideas, creatives, brands and agencies", says Merz. "At its best, this form of appreciation and celebration of outstanding achievements can inspire and have a motivating effect on daily creative work." For Sir Mary, the campaign "The FlipCode Mystery" for Samsung stood out in particular last year. "Not a classic advertising campaign, but a fascinating fusion of pop culture and interactive entertainment," explains Merz. It is emblematic of the agency's claim to gain the attention of the target group in the long term through "memorable" entertainment.

Digitec Galaxus came in 9th place with 78 points. For years, the retailer has been ensuring a high level of creativity with its in-house campaigns, which was rewarded in 2024 with precious metal at the ADC Awards, the Edi. and the Swiss Out Of Home Awards and thus a place in the creative ranking. The fact that the ADC awarded Digitec Galaxus an Evergreen for the second time, this time for the "Voll das Leben" campaign, also underlines the sustained high level of creative work.

Finally, Neu Creative Agency took tenth place with 70 points. Due to the management buyout from the Omnicom Group in fall 2023, the agency formerly known as "Heimat Zürich" is considered the "youngest" and smallest representative in the top 10 - a symbol of its rise in the industry? Co-Managing Director Simon Rehsche recalls that the award for the "Werbung naja, Zins gut" campaign as Campaign of the Year at the Out of Home Award was celebrated particularly lavishly: "We are delighted to be the smallest and newest top 10 agency in Switzerland," says Neu's Head of Strategy. "We like the 1 in our rank better than the 0, which should be removed."

This article first appeared in the m&k print edition 1-2/2025.