APAC lags as Saatchi & Saatchi leads global new business charge

Publicis Groupe’s Saatchi & Saatchi ended the year as the most active creative shop with $1.91 billion in new-business billings, according to Campaign Red’s latest analysis of global creative agencies. Its biggest win: a Chinese diary conglomerate with media billings of $769 million. 

Sister shops Digitas, Leo Burnett and Publicis Luxe also retained their positions at the top of the table, with Fallon climbing up one place to make up the top five. 

Meanwhile, Digitas landed in second place with $1.37 billion in media billings and won two big US briefs: a confectionery giant with media billings worth $474.7 million and an electronics company worth $366.7 million.

Leo Burnett secured third place with $1.29 billion in media billings, after winning part of the global Ferrero pitch, which was worth £1.07 billion ($1.3 billion) in its entirety. The shop’s biggest slice of the pie was Italy worth $216 million in media billings and Germany valued at $214.9 million.

The top three were the only agencies to have amassed clients totalling more than a billion in media spend. 

Elsewhere in the league, there was a fair bit of movement, including WPP agency VML, which climbed five spots. The shop jumped from 12th to seventh place in the final 2024 ranking. A US account for a pharmaceuticals company was the biggest win for the shop, with media billings worth $7 million. 

Another big climber was M&C Saatchi Group, which moved four places, ending the year in 15th. The shop was particularly successful in Asia Pacific where it bagged its two biggest wins: one for an entertainment company in India with media billings of $5 million; the other a bank in Singapore worth $4 million. 

Two shops dropped off the list, Publicis’ Arc and WPP’s Scholz & Friends, which were previously ranked 16th and 20th respectively. 

The state of the new business market in 2024

Asia Pacific had a muted 2024. Pitch consultancy R3 reported a decline in pitch volume—a drop of at least a third in 2024 compared with 2023. 

Greg Paull, president of R3, says brands are now looking to a broader pool of sources for “bigger ideas, more accountability and speed to market.”

“Marketers are looking far and wide to agencies, but also platforms, influencers and even their own users for ideas. In this kind of environment, it’s a challenge for agencies to manage profitable growth," he says. 

In the US, the new-business market felt the strain following a tough 2023, which Simone Mandel, co-founder of US intermediary NBZ Partner describes as a “punch to the gut”.

2024 was mooted to be a “recovery” year, but Mandel says it felt more stagnant than anything, with the new-business pipeline “feeling like molasses, with a lot of starts and stops. Clients were dragging their feet making decisions."

The looming US presidential election in the middle of the year did give a temporary boost to activity. Mandel says, “it started pushing brands to make decisions, which made the pipeline more flowing”.

This year, the industry is more optimistic. New research conducted by Campaign US, found that 91.7% of surveyed new-business professionals were more positive about the state of the industry this year than they were last year.  

Things were slightly rosier in the UK. Rebecca Nunneley, lead creative consultant at AAR, says agencies didn't feel as if 2024 was a tough year for new business. However, she adds that “there were far fewer big opportunities (by billings) than 2023”. 

“The market was more relentless and busy on smaller opportunities,” she said.

But the UK market was erratic, according to Charlie Carpenter, chief executive of Creative Brief. For the most part, he says, new business was unpredictable and inconsistent. There were “three or four month periods that were flat out busy, and then two or three month periods that were very quiet", he adds. 

Looking ahead, Nunneley says several large media accounts changed hands last year, and she predicts the same brands may review their creative partners this year. 

AI conversations in pitches focus on efficiency 

The topic of AI is increasingly coming up in creative pitches. But, currently, marketers are interested in how they can use the technology to cut costs, drive efficiencies and produce content at a larger scale, rather than how it is used in the creative campaign itself, intermediaries say. 

In Asia-Pacific, Paull notes that some marketers have been hesitant to go in headfirst on AI as regulatory concerns are a challenge. 

In the UK, Nunneley says, “Brands are thinking about AI in terms of content at scale, production at scale and efficiency. Clients tell us they are really keen to learn about AI and explore that as part of the pitch process. But it’s not the driver of pitch success. It’s still the team and the strategic and creative thinking that wins the pitch.” 

Carpenter agrees that AI is “definitely coming up a lot in conversation” but the focus tends to be about resource efficiency. “Last year, brands were asking how agencies deploy AI internally within their own businesses to deliver more efficiency, and to improve speed, agility and lower costs."

But he thinks this may shift in 2025. “What I expect to see more of this year is brands asking about how agencies would deploy AI on their own brands in a more customer-facing way to deliver quality content,” he adds 

Likewise, efficiency is also on the mind in the US. Mandel believes it is the agency's responsibility to bring AI capabilities to the table. She says AI is the solution to “creating enough content to keep audiences engaged with the brand, but also not break the bank.”

The media billings associated with the accounts are accurate at the time of submission to Campaign Red.

This creative agency rankings is produced by Campaign Red using direct data from agencies, intermediaries, and other market intelligence. The table includes project, AOR and accounts retained as long as it's won through a competitive pitch.

Agencies that are unable to provide billings for wins will not appear in the billings rankings table.