Adweek’s Agency Report Cards Deserve A Failing Grade

I’ve written before about Adweek’s lack of focus, which led me to stop subscribing after 15 years.
This year’s Agency Report Card special report shows how little interest Adweek has in covering advertising agencies. Never mind the strange management and revenue grades, which don’t seem to have much bearing on an agency’s health. The magazine used to highlight national and regional agencies, and many many more of them.
I was thinking about all the notable agencies they used to report on that they didn’t report on this year:
Campbell-Ewald, Zimmerman, Campbell Mithun, Cole & Weber, 22Squared, Fitzgerald + Co, Barkley, Bernstein-Rein, TM Advertising, Rubin Postaer, Ground Zero, Team One, Hal Riney, The Buntin Group, Tracy Locke…and I’m sure there are plenty others.
Now, these shops may not be the biggest, or the best, but they’re strong regional shops. Adweek used to cover them, or at least report on them, and now they don’t. (If you’re looking for digital shops’ report cards, that was a separate issue last month.)
The economy is forcing smaller and mid-sized shops to be more nimble, and it’s giving birth to lots of startups. I’d like for us at AdPulp, and other industry blogs, to focus on the shops that Adweek doesn’t care about–which, in other words, is most of them. It’s a void I think we’d be happy to fill. And it won’t cost you $299 a year.