The Prolific North Top 50 Integrated Agencies 2016

Jump straight to the table

A big welcome to the 2016 edition of the Prolific North Top 50 Integrated Agencies, the definitive list of the North’s leading advertising, marketing, integrated, sales and communications agencies.

Once again, this initiative is published in association with Better Placed and is supported by Mustard Research.

The Top 50 Integrated Agencies initiative complements Prolific North’s other definitive rankings of the region’s leading PR Agencies, Digital Agencies, Top 100 Brands and Top In-house Communicators.

Unlike most agency rankings, the Prolific North ranking is wholly independent and is anchored on financial information taken from Companies House, supplemented by additional information provided by an overwhelming majority of the agencies contacted.

The ranking is predicated on a formula which examines a variety of factors including shareholder funds and/or balance sheets, turnover, pre-tax profits and headcount. Because roughly only one third of the agencies file full accounts (over £6.5m turnover), part of our agreement with companies providing confidential information is that we will not itemise or publicise their individual financials.

Agencies were not offered the option to be included or not.

This does mean that certain agencies may appear – usually – lower in the ranking than many observers might have expected but offering agencies the option to opt out rather than report on a one-off disappointing year would dilute the definitive nature of the list.

In total, we have engaged over 130 agencies and we would like to take this opportunity to thank all the agencies – whether they are included or not – for their time and attention in helping to create this unique financial snapshot of Northern marketing services excellence.

Once again we would like to thank Better Placed for its support of this initiative.

Mustard Research managed and delivered the research, and we’d also like to thank the financial reporting company Fame BvD for providing a wealth of financial data to underpin the initiative. Any queries about the data used should be directed to Jo at jo.iaconianni@mustard-research.com.

For the fourth year running, McCann Manchester come out on top, ahead of Havas Lynx, which jumped two places from last year’s position.

Sheffield agency Jaywing retained third spot, with Home and WRG once again making up the top five.

Across the whole of the top 10, Yorkshire agencies take six places, with Manchester/Cheshire filling the other four.

Take a look at the full list below:

The Prolific North Top 50 Integrated Agencies 2016