What it really means to be an Ad Age A-List winner

The 2025 Ad Age A-List is here, celebrating the agencies and production companies that received the highest letter grade possible. And it’s an impressive list, featuring nearly as many categories as the Tony Awards, including some new ones (B2B Agency of the Year, Sports/Entertainment Agency of the Year). All those categories make sense given that modern marketing involves so many distinct challenges, some demanding craft and others requiring precision. From concept to choreography, ideation to implementation, expertise is needed at every turn to keep winning campaigns on track. So, as we contemplate what it means to get an ‘A’ amidst all the disruption in marketing these days, let’s give new meaning to the first letter of the alphabet. After all, the letter A contains some awesome clues for agencies and clients who want to get top honors. Astounding is a very good A-word for kicking off creative categories because breakthrough work must be surprising and unexpected—and sadly most of today’s advertising is predictable, safe and easily ignored. Let’s face it, no one is asking for more advertising in their lives, and with attention spans getting shorter each year, only astonishing creative will cut through the clutter. Similarly, messages delivered by mediocre media plans will never be seen. Look for new platforms, new partnerships and new ways to dominate the moments that matter. Average has never been good, but now it’s a death sentence. Marketing that’s forgotten as soon as your busy brain moves onto something else isn’t marketing at all, it’s noise. Humans evolved to tune out anything that doesn’t intrigue at first glance. Familiar is fatal, so if you want your brand to matter, mix things up and make something fresh. See all of Ad Age’s 2025 Agency A-List winners here Accurate is important when aiming for a target, so that’s the A-word that matters for the honorees that deal with data and analytics. We just have to remember that while data can be invaluable when it comes to validating human insights, identifying new areas of growth and bringing context to consumer behavior, it’s an ingredient, not the recipe. Think of it this way: Instead of being interruptive, marketing should be additive (another excellent A-word). Studies show contextual advertising is far more effective than programmatic stalking, so accurate data is essential for building a clear picture of when brands should place their message in an environment where it belongs. This makes alacrity an underappreciated attribute absent from too many campaigns. Agencies love to talk about moving at the speed of culture, but examples of brands pivoting with the news cycle remain rare beyond a few social feeds. As the media landscape blurs, agencies and clients need to engage in more scenario planning, a “what if?” exercise that includes preparing different messages depending on what happens next. If the NFL can prepare two sets of championship jerseys for every Super Bowl, marketers can plan their own culture calendars in advance and appear in the context of what people care about this week. The redundancy of the same ad running again and again with no variation is beyond annoying, it’s ineffective. Media agencies, creative shops and clients need to recognize that traditional measures of reach and frequency are increasingly irrelevant. Every platform demands fresh content, so plan for variety and figure out how to produce content at scale. AI can help tremendously here, but choreography is key. When it comes to the A-List production honorees, attention to detail is the difference between something well-crafted and something commoditized. In the heyday of TV advertising you noticed craft: short films beautifully shot, scored and edited, often by professionals who also made feature films. Kudos to all the craftsmen and craftswomen who made something beautiful last year. As margins tighten, production budgets shrink and the impact of media diminishes, there is less focus on craft. Agencies settle, clients compromise and everyone tells themselves good is good enough. This is a mistake. True craft requires experienced talent, and big networks have been shedding talent like a snake sheds its skin, so no wonder much of today’s work is disposable and disregarded. Perhaps this suggests another A-word, not a very nice one, but it’s the reason why making the A-List is so hard, and why it’s even harder to stay on it ... Avarice has infected much of the agency business, as we’ve seen with the heralded merger of two massive holding companies, a combination that will create a mega–Death Star whose only reason for being seems to be shaving $750 million—and tens of thousands of jobs—from the balance sheet. The holding company model was inherently flawed from the beginning, but it seems to have reached its nadir by necessity, since the only way to plug so many holes in a leaky bucket is by turning within. This puts client needs on the back burner, which is why CMOs are restless. Is it any wonder clients are turning to new entrants, new models and independent players whose focus remains on doing great work and driving growth for their clients? It’s no surprise that agencies with the best margins rarely ever talk about money. They talk about clients, ideas and the work. That’s how you make money—not from avarice but from ambition. That’s why the A-List matters, and why things are looking up for anyone open to trying something new, bold and different. A new chapter for an industry sorely in need of resurrection. That sounds A-okay to me.

What it really means to be an Ad Age A-List winner

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