The contest for Cresta 2026 Of The Year honours has been one of the closest fought yet, with Oslo independent agency, Try, taking both of only two Grands Prix awarded.

Here are the special awards:

• Network of the Year is BBDO Worldwide, just ahead of Serviceplan

• Independent Network of the Year is Serviceplan 
• Agency of the Year is BigTime Creative Shop of Riyadh. Even though Try had two Grand Prix and four Golds, and last year’s winner AMV BBDO had four Golds and a Bronze, BigTime just managed to come out on top with the accumulated points it harvested from two Golds, three Silvers, and seven Bronze awards. 
• Production Company of the Year is Riff Raff Films. Riff Raff also picked up one of the prestigious special Jury Chair awards for its EA Skate commercial, Drop In, that was the cornerstone of its multi-trophy success.

Matthew Fone, founder and owner of Riff Raff Films, commented, “It’s hard to win pitches, hard to make things and even harder to make great things that win awards. To win at Cresta is more than special as the jury is semi-permanent so I feel it is even harder to impress them year in year out with what we are doing as a production company. Many thanks to the jury.”

This year’s Jury Chair was Kate Stanners, international chief creative officer at Edelman. She picked out three works for special commendation and comment. Besides the honour to Drop In, she also highlighted Sheep Happens from Serviceplan/plan.net and WingSentry from Horizon FCB in Dubai, an agency that was also among contenders for the Of The Year honors. 

Her choices emphasised her interest in innovative creativity that drives earned media, with the choice of Sheep Happens, a global breakout hit for Penny supermarkets, a campaign built around the surprise visit of a rogue herd of sheep to a store. “Its craft was its speed,” commented Stanners.

Somewhat more gently paced was the inspired harvesting of endangered species data in the WingSentry project for client Behavioural Ecology & Conservation Group, which Stanners said was “a beautiful tool that has the power to make real positive change”.

Cresta CEO, Lewis Blackwell, added, “Overall the voting in this year’s competition led to the closest set of accumulated marks we have yet seen when it came to deciding the Of The Year awards. As with all our awards, we go strictly by the logic of what all the votes add up to from our wonderful jurors, and the trophy wins that leads to. Then for the Of The Year wins we assign a consistent points value to the various award levels. This year, we have seen the same old song emerge in some ways, with familiar winners, but there’s definitely a different tune playing.”