The experiential marketing industry’s first and only comprehensive guide to the best agency partners in the business
Our annual It List turns 17 this year, and like all 17-year-olds—it’s going through some changes. The It List is designed to reflect the changing needs of the brands and marketers who use it. So this year, we gave our It List application a facelift—tweaking our questions and selection criteria to better illuminate the agencies that are keeping pace with the industry—and what you need to be successful.
Among updates, we put less emphasis on office culture and years in business and more emphasis on strategic thinking, creative culture and work. We wanted to understand better how the most innovative companies in events think. We also put more emphasis on new work as well as metrics, giving those companies delivering exceptional results for clients higher marks on our checklist. And we weighed the overall growth of the organizations: their top headlines of their year, awards won, client wins and new hires.
This year’s list is comprised of start-ups and boutiques, legacy shops and monolithic organizations. Some have a few dozen employees, and some, hundreds worldwide. Some specialize in b-to-b, while others, in b-to-c. Some, in a little of both.
As we have remarked over the past 17 years, the It List selection task is no walk in the park. Every year we huddle together for several weeks, scrutinizing newbies and veterans alike, digging through portfolios of work, and tracking the standout programs that captured the industry’s attention—all to provide the brand community the list of who it should be working with this year, and why. So, enjoy our annual guide and let the partner searching begin.