We’re Campaign’s Independent Creative Agency of the Year
Campaign’s Agency of the Year awards have been benchmarking excellence since the early 1990s. Featuring a robust panel of expert judges, these prestigious awards evaluate the overall performance of an agency.
We’re proud to be the most awarded agency at the 2025 awards. Here’s what we won and how we did it.
Gold: Agency Producer of the Year: Girlu0026amp;Bear
VCCP’s makers know how to make great things happen, and this award is a reflection of a year filled with innovation, creativity and hustle. Against a backdrop of demands for fast, cost effective content, we’ve embraced technology where it helps us craft at scale and pushed creative boundaries to make exciting work for exciting brands.
Taking another step forwards in our ambition to get a global reputation for ‘Craft without Compromise’, it was only natural that we would make it to the Americas to further expand our global footprint. Our US offering is deliberately lean and agile, but backed by the strength of a truly global production network.
Our Girlu0026amp;Bear mentality opens doors creatively. We know our approach is different – we’re built to partner, not compete. We’re collaborative by design, and that spirit always extends to how we work with creative agencies, media partners and production companies alike.
Gold: Strategic Leader: Michael Lee
Our Group Chief Strategy Officer, Michael Lee leads a high-performance, integrated squad of specialists spanning faith, Employer Brand, Loyalty u0026amp; CRM, and VCCP Social Club. Under Michaelʼs leadership, these multi-disciplinary teams represent a hive of activity and innovation within our business, driven by Michael’s ability to unify diverse strategic perspectives into a cohesive global force.
In 2025, Michael coined the phrase ‘the Goldilocks equationʼ, something he's observed as being a challenge for every agency: striking the right balance between enthusiastically embracing the significant benefits of AI and prioritising human creativity and imagination. This phrase has been front of mind for Michael throughout this year: we prioritised staying true to VCCPʼs original mission statement on AI: that we will always use AI as an accelerator of human creativity. Our work for O2 on Daisy vs Scammers, our AI scambaiting granny, is just one of many examples of how we've lived that belief.
Gold: Talent Management Team: DEu0026amp;I Collective
DEu0026amp;I isn’t a buzzword at VCCP; it’s in our foundation. Our DEu0026amp;I Collective drive our agenda across every part of the agency, from inclusive recruitment to cultural events and award-winning work. We’re absolutely thrilled with our 2025 win, which brings the team’s tally to four years out of the last five.
While others have retreated, we continue to see diversity of thought as our superpower and lean harder than ever into what we believe is fair and right. That's why we've gone bigger on DEu0026amp;I than ever before. We expanded our DEu0026amp;I Collective from 15 to 40 people across the business, scaled our educational youth charity, The Challenger Academy, to new parts of the country and brought a new agency partner, Oliver, on board, and have provided DEu0026amp;I consultancy to more clients to ensure more inclusive work.
The results speak for themselves. By refusing to conform to a world retreating on DEu0026amp;I initiatives, we have achieved a 9.7% turnover rate (less than half the industry average of 21.4%) and ensured that 52% of our entry level intake came from underrepresented backgrounds.
Gold: Independent Creative Agency of the Year
In 2025, we enhanced our creative prowess both physically and strategically. We evolved our independent agency model to meet a new marketing frontier, using AI not to replace the creative process, but to accelerate its impact. The success of Daisy, our AI Granny, became our ultimate proof of concept: a piece of creative technology that became a worldwide talking point.
While our overall mantra may be to challenge convention to create value, creativity is the catalyst that accelerates our success. A data-led brand strategy may enable us to see how we can act as a true client partner, unlocking revenue and changing perceptions, but it is our creative excellence that delivers enduring work that creates value for our clients.
In turn, this approach to creativity enables our goal of populating culture. Work that’s world-renowned, that sparks conversation, that will live beyond the lifespan of the campaign to be talked about with pride for years to come.
"A great reel of work. With thinking of this scale, it's hard to believe they’re an indie." Campaign Agency of the Year judges
Alongside these great achievements, we were also awarded Silver in Integrated Marketing Agency of the Year, recognising the breath and expertise of our twenty specialist capabilities fully integrated under one roof and our commitment to the belief that it only works if it all works.
The Campaign Agency of the Year awards end what’s been a beary big week for VCCP. We’ve welcomed our global leadership team to London to reaffirm our global ambitions and growth plan, and we’ve brought our team together in our Annual Company Meeting to reflect on a stellar 2025 and engage everyone who works at VCCP on our course for 2026.
“Awards like these showcase how the things that make VCCP special are the things that enable us to truly partner with our clients. The perfect blend of agility, challenger spirit and creative innovation. Now we raise our own bar again”. Michael Sugden, CEO, VCCP Group