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Omnicom named most creative agency by Gunn Report
MUMBAI: Gunn Report for Media named Omnicom Media Group Agency OMD Worldwide as world’s most creative media agency. This year, the perennial first ranked network was joined in the top three by sister Omnicom Media Group agency PHD Worldwide, which claimed the third place ranking.
The Gunn Report for Media is the industry standard for evaluating media creativity, ranking agencies according to their performance in the top industry awards shows around the world. Most importantly, it recognizes the vital role media agencies play in today’s highly competitive and fragmented communications landscape. The rankings reflect a point system based on awards won in more than 50 annual award competitions worldwide.
In addition to OMD leading the list with 521 points, the top five slots were claimed by Starcom-Mediavest (Publicis) with 467 points; Omnicom Media Group’s PHD (357 points); Mindshare (Group M) with 294 points; and UM (IPG) with 209 points.
With agencies claiming the first and third slots on the ranking, Omnicom Media Group is the only media holding group to have two agencies in the ranking’s top five. With a combined 878 points earned by its OMD and PHD networks, Omnicom Media Group also earned the most combined points of any media holding group in the ranking, followed by GroupM, which earned a total of 738 points earned across its four agency networks.
For its ninth showing at the top of the list, OMD’s top ranking reflects recognition earned in 2014 by agencies in every region across its network, with stand-out performers including OMD Singapore, OMD UK, OMD Colombia and OMD MENA, which was the most awarded media agency at the 2014 Effies.
PHD joins the Top Three for the first time, having won four Gold Media Lions in Cannes – the most Golds won by any media agency in 2014. Among the standout performers are PHD UK and PHD India; as well as PHD Hong Kong, PHD New Zealand, PHD China, PHD Denmark and PHD Colombia. PHD was also recognized in the report for having two of the world’s most awarded campaigns in 2014.
Omnicom Media Group CEO Daryl Simm said, “Awards are a great testament to the innovation and creativity of our networks and our people. No source provides as comprehensive a measure of an organization’s ability to deliver great work on a global level as the Gunn Report — we’re very proud of this recognition.”
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Kevin Vaz opens FICCI-EY report with a declaration: India’s M&E industry set to breach Rs 3 trillion mark by 2027
In a keynote address at the FICCI-EY report launch, Kevin Vaz says sport, AI and the connected TV boom are driving a multi-screen revolution with no signs of slowing
MUMBAI: India’s media and entertainment industry is growing faster than the economy, reshaping global benchmarks and is on course to blow past Rs 3 trillion by 2027. That was the headline message from Kevin Vaz, chairman of the FICCI Media and Entertainment Committee and chief executive of entertainment at JioStar, who delivered the opening keynote at the launch of the FICCI-EY Media and Entertainment Report 2026 in Mumbai on Monday. He did not waste much time on caveats.
The industry hit Rs 2.78 trillion in 2025, outpacing GDP per capita growth and surpassing even last year’s bullish forecasts. Vaz described the year in three words: scale, convergence, transformation. The numbers, he suggested, were only half the story. The other half was how that growth was happening.
Digital has become the industry’s largest segment, driven by advertising, subscriptions and commerce. But Vaz was quick to puncture the familiar narrative of digital killing everything else. India, he argued, is not an either-or market. It is an AND market. Connected TV is surging. Linear television, mobile, films and print are all still expanding. AVGC, the animation, visual effects, gaming and comics sector, is emerging as a serious growth engine, opening new storytelling formats and new global revenue streams. Nothing, he said, is replacing anything. Everything is reinforcing everything else.
Nowhere is that more vivid than in sport. In an on-demand world where audiences can watch anything, anytime, Indians still show up live. “Sports don’t fragment audiences,” Vaz said. “They unite them, just on different screens.” The ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026 made the point emphatically. During the final, JioHotstar delivered 72.5 million concurrent streams, a global record. Group chats exploded. Families renegotiated control of the television. Advertisers, Vaz noted with undisguised relish, stopped asking where audiences were and started asking how fast they could get in.
Cinema had its own landmark year. More than 1,900 films were released, with several crossing the Rs 1 billion mark. Dhurandhar was singled out as proof that Indian audiences will still turn up in large numbers for content that grips them. Live experiences, too, are getting bigger and more immersive, though Vaz suggested the surface has barely been scratched.
Then there is artificial intelligence, which he described as quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, reshaping everything. AI is enabling personalisation, efficiency and scale, but Vaz argued its deeper significance lies in what it is doing to creativity itself. He pointed to Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh, billed as the world’s first AI-produced show, as evidence that the technology can amplify creative ambition rather than hollow it out. He also used the platform to call on Indian policymakers to engage seriously with the creative industry on AI and copyright, ensuring that creators are fairly compensated as the technology spreads.
The picture that emerges from the report, and from Vaz’s keynote, is of an industry that has stopped thinking of itself as a fast-growing emerging market and started thinking of itself as a global template. Scale, diversity and innovation, he said, are no longer in tension in India. They are coexisting, and the rest of the world is taking notes.
The Rs 3 trillion milestone is two years away. As the man who chairs the committee that shapes the industry’s policy agenda and runs the country’s most powerful entertainment platform, Vaz set the tone for the day with characteristic directness: India’s media business is not just chasing growth. It is deciding what the country talks about at dinner. That is a different kind of power altogether.
