Agency Of The Year Malaysia

Arrived back in KL last night, after a week of helping to put together and celebrate our Agency Of The Year awards gala night in Singapore.

Yes, while Pamela was holding down the A+M Daily fort in KL last week, I was in Singapore learning what it means to play host to over 750 marketing professionals. I only bring it up because although A+M will publish the Malaysian results in our August edition - we'll have to wait till next year before we can put on a similar show here.

L-R: John Davidson, Ben Burrowes, Tony Kelly, Matt Eaton

We live blogged the event on marketing-interactive.com and we'll leave the event active for another day so you can check out what happened (warning - spoiler ahead)

And what happened that night was, for the first time in its history, the Agency Of The Year award did not go to a creative agency heavyweight like your O&Ms or Saatchis.

Nope, this year marketers (your clients) voted digital agency Blue (founded in Singapore)as the winner. Amazing. Fantastic. Shocking?

Sure, you can say the survey results are based on client perception and not by a panel of judges (isn't that a good thing?) but perception is reality. And while huge organizations like O&M (with its creative, PR, digital, direct, activation arms etc) tend to dominate and take home the overall Agency Of The Year honour, it seems so appropriate it went to a digital agency this time.

Blue win

So, you'll just to wait a few weeks to know what the Malaysia results are - and next year we'll buy the beers.

Me having a beer with Futurebrand ECD Andrew King