PHD

The massive win of the $3 billion Global Volkswagen account put the shop over the top.

- Katie Richards

The rise of PHD is not so much an overnight success story as a slow and steady ascent to the incredible heights it has reached—capped off by a year that made the shop the envy of the media-buying universe.

“For a long time PHD was growing, but not at the pace we needed. If anything, it was a conflict shop for Omnicom Media Group,” explains Nathan Brown, CEO of PHD U.S.

PHD, Adweek’s Global Media Agency of the Year for 2016, scored a number of impressive, high-profile wins over the past year—most notably, the $3 billion global Volkswagen account as well as Delta Air Lines and Carnival Cruise Line in the U.S. and a number of international clients.

“This is the year that, to everyone else, PHD became everything we knew it would be,” says Omnicom Media Group chairman and CEO Daryl Simm.

Last year, PHD racked up $4 billion of media spend in wins; Recma says it generated $750 million in revenue, a 15 percent gain over 2015. It was also the year the agency opened nine offices worldwide and began the scrupulous process of recruiting 500 new team members to meet the demands of the massive VW business, one of the largest media account wins in history.

How VW Was Won

Mike Cooper, PHD’s worldwide CEO, wasn’t doing anything extraordinary on the afternoon he learned his agency had won VW’s media account after 16 months of pitches and meetings. The story feels almost anticlimactic following the grueling journey the agency went through to eventually scoop up the business. Cooper stepped out on a Friday afternoon to grab a sandwich when his phone rang, and VW informed him PHD would be its sole media agency, in charge of business for all eight nameplates, including Audi, Bentley and Porsche.