• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, May 13, 2015

Publicis Groupe’s Starcom MediaVest Group USA has been awarded Agency of the Year honors at this year’s Festival of Media Global, one of three Grand Prix winners at the festival which convened in Rome this week. 

The other Grand Prix winners were Omnicom’s OMD, which took home the Agency Network of the Year award, and an ad campaign “Penny The Pirate,” created by Saatchi & Saatchi Australia for eye care chain OPSM. Media was handled by OMD/M2M. 

SMG also took home gold in the Best Communications Strategy category for the ad campaign #LikeAGirl for client Always. Sibling agency Leo Burnett handled creative. 

OMD/M2M was awarded gold in the Best Engagement Strategy category for the Penny the Pirate campaign. 

OMD won gold in the Creative Use of Media category for a campaign called Tinny Vision for client New Zealand Transport Agency. 

SMG also won gold in the Best Use of Programmatic Technology category for a campaign for client Samsung. 

More on the award winners and shortlisted agencies can be found here.