Digitas rules SXSW 2012; advertising agency presence at SXSW steady in ’12 after 10x growth in 2011

After gargantuan growth into 2011, attendance at SXSW by advertising agency staff finally leveled off in 2012. Whew.

This year Digitas wins the King of SXSW prize, followed closely by Ogilvy and Razorfish. Last year’s King, Leo Burnett, fell to #9 in the SXSW agency list.

To get the fairest results possible, we took the same BBQ-style approach to number crunching as last year. We mixed together all of the agencies that share a name (i.e. Ogilvy, Leo Burnett, BBDO), chopped and sorted by attendance and added a little sauce to get our list of 192 agencies.

After chronicling last year’s 10X advertising agency growth, this year Blogads research staff compared this registration data of 110 agencies as accessed through SXSW’s site. The overall attendance numbers were steady since last year, after a huge increase from 2010 to 2011.

When you look at the numbers on an agency-by-agency level, you’ll see a few agencies cut back for this year’s festival. Agencies like Sapient, Mr Youth and Possible Worldwide registered only a fraction of the numbers they sent last year. Austin’s own GSD&M only has five people registered, compared to 55 in 2011. 

UPDATE 3/10: Thanks to the folks from GSD&M who have given us their updated registration number this year of 64. Phew! Glad you made it! Strangely, their registrants individually visible in the search database, but not when searching for “GSD&M.” Anyone else out there want to update the numbers?

Razorfish and Digitas have significantly beefed up their presence, and Rosetta wins the “most improved” award, sending 17 folks compared to just one last year.

Don’t see your name on our list? Is your agency sending some walk-up registrants to Texas? Are you the real King of SXSWi? Let us know, and we’ll update our data.

Oh, and don’t worry PR folks, your report card is coming out next.

See y’all in Austin, pardners!

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