Best Advertising Agencies in Hamburg (2026)

Introduction

Hamburg is still the city where much of German advertising gets made, and the seven agencies below are the ones with the strongest recent record there. They range from the Hamburg houses of WPP, Accenture and the Serviceplan Group to owner-managed shops that have run the same big accounts for years.

The local map has shifted in the past two years. WPP brought Ogilvy, thjnk and Grey together under one Ogilvy roof in Germany, Omnicom retired the DDB brand after completing its acquisition of IPG at the end of 2025, and Porsche moved its account away from Grabarz & Partner. The city also hosted THE BEST AGENCY awards in September 2026, where Serviceplan’s Saint Elmo’s topped the annual ranking and Leagas Delaney Hamburg took a Gold for its Stromberg campaign.

Every agency here has an active Hamburg office in 2026. Independent idea shops such as Jung von Matt and Philipp und Keuntje appear on our creative agencies list instead. The list runs in no fixed order of merit, because the right partner depends on the brief, the budget and how much media and production support you need.

The best advertising agencies in Hamburg

1. Scholz & Friends

Part of WPP and VML · Hamburg · s-f.family

Scholz & Friends was founded in Hamburg in 1981 and now runs seven offices across Germany, Austria and Switzerland, with Hamburg among them. The agency is part of WPP and VML. It counts 27 Effie Awards in Germany between 2019 and 2025, and it won Global Agency of the Year at the Gerety Awards.

McDonald’s Germany is its best-known account, with a steady run of campaigns through 2025 and 2026, several shot by Hamburg production companies. Other clients include AOK, which kept it as lead agency in 2025, IWC Schaffhausen (“The Most Brilliant Failure”), Volkswagen and the finance platform Pleo, whose campaign launched in September 2026.

2. Grabarz & Partner

Owner-managed, in Omnicom’s DAS Group · Hamburg · grabarzundpartner.de

Grabarz & Partner is one of Hamburg’s largest advertising agencies, with more than 260 staff. It describes itself as owner-managed and joined Omnicom’s DAS Group of Companies in 2023. Campaign has listed it among the world’s leading independent agencies.

Its long-standing clients include Volkswagen, IKEA, Burger King and DEVK. The agency lost the Porsche account in 2026 and spoke openly about it to LBB in August. Recent work includes a water safety campaign with DLRG and Ströer on digital out-of-home screens and a film that uses AI to show how depression dulls emotion.

3. Serviceplan Hamburg

Serviceplan Group, owner-managed · Neustadt · serviceplan.com

Serviceplan Group is owner-managed, and its Hamburg House of Communication has sat in the historic Elbhof on Steinhöft since 2015. Around 450 people work there across the group’s three brands: Serviceplan for creative work, Mediaplus for media and Plan.Net for digital. The group led THE BEST AGENCY all-time ranking in October 2026.

The house works for more than 80 clients. Cases featured on its Hamburg page include O2 “The Visible Net”, AIDA’s “Lass den Alltag davonsegeln” and flaschenpost’s “Viva la Samstag”. Having creative, media and digital under one roof suits clients who want a single agency team rather than several.

4. Saint Elmo’s Hamburg

Serviceplan Group · Neustadt · saint-elmos.com

Saint Elmo’s is a Munich-based agency in the Serviceplan Group, and its Hamburg office shares the Steinhöft building with Serviceplan. It topped THE BEST AGENCY annual ranking in 2026 with three Golds, including “Balls for Balls” and “Sheep happens”, the latter made with charles & charlotte.

Hamburg clients include LOTTO Hamburg and Proviant, which named the Hamburg office its creative lead agency. Pedro Americo joined the office as creative director in July 2026. Across the agency, recent work covers PENNY and Borussia Dortmund, whose mockumentary “Buying Borussia” followed a pitch win in September 2026.

5. Leagas Delaney Hamburg

Leagas Delaney network · Altona · leagasdelaney.de

Leagas Delaney Hamburg is the German office of Leagas Delaney, whose network includes London, and sits on Große Elbstraße by the Altona waterfront. It won Gold at THE BEST AGENCY 2026 with Banijay Media for a branded entertainment campaign that brought LORENZ Erdnußlocken together with the comedy Stromberg.

The agency became lead agency for LORENZ Snacks in July 2025 and for Leerdammer in February 2025. Other clients include BRITA, TARGOBANK and the federal development ministry’s #17Ziele campaign. In 2025 it also took a stake in the AI start-up Flux AI.

6. Accenture Song Hamburg

Accenture · Hamburg · accenture.com

Accenture Song’s Hamburg office is the former Kolle Rebbe, which Accenture bought in 2018 and brought under the Song name in 2022. Laura Müller-Rossbach became creative lead in 2025, working with chief creative officer Thomas Knüwer. Red Dot named Accenture Song its Agency of the Year 2025, citing work such as WWF Germany’s GhostNetZero and Lufthansa’s Pride campaign.

Recent Hamburg work includes a rebrand for the Brunch spread and APO’s #ChronischMensch. Consultancy ownership is useful when a campaign is tied to wider digital or customer experience projects.

7. Ogilvy Germany (Hamburg)

WPP · Ottensen · ogilvy.com/de

Ogilvy Group Germany now combines Ogilvy, thjnk and Grey under one agency roof, and Hamburg is one of its main bases. thjnk’s office on Friedensallee in Ottensen is part of the group, as is INGO Hamburg, the creative agency Tobias Ahrens opened in 2021. The group ranked second in THE BEST AGENCY all-time ranking in October 2026.

Ogilvy’s German client list includes Deutsche Bahn, Audi, IKEA, Milka, Telekom and Vorwerk. thjnk’s agency group kept the enercity account after a formal pitch in September 2026, and its marmalade campaign won Silver at THE BEST AGENCY 2026. Ask which unit will lead your account, since the brands still pitch under their own names.

What to look for in a Hamburg advertising agency

Start with the structure behind the agency. Hamburg’s larger houses bundle creative, media and digital, which helps when a campaign has to run across TV, out-of-home and social at once. Owner-managed agencies such as Grabarz & Partner or Leagas Delaney tend to put senior people closer to the work and decide faster.

Check how recent the case studies are. Several Hamburg agencies merged, rebranded or lost anchor clients in 2025 and 2026, so a reel from 2022 may come from a team or brand that no longer exists in that form. Ask who in the pitch team will run the account day to day.

Look at the production network. Hamburg has a deep bench of production companies, post houses and sound studios, and the agencies here use them often. An agency with steady production partners can turn a script into a finished spot and its cutdowns with fewer surprises on cost.

Then look at how the agency runs reviews. A campaign produces many versions of each film, key visual and banner set, and feedback rounds can drag when comments arrive by email against the wrong cut. Agencies that keep one current version in one place, with comments attached to the file, tend to hit air dates with less stress.

How Fabric helps advertising agency teams

Fabric gives an advertising agency one workspace for campaign files, client feedback and account knowledge, with AI search across all of it. The agency setup works around one space per client, so scripts, key visuals, edits and meeting notes for an account stay together.

Spots, cutdowns and print-ready layouts live in Fabric’s cloud drive, which streams files on demand and takes no local disk space, so heavy edits open without a full download. Search works by meaning across documents, images and transcribed audio and video, and results jump to the right page or timestamp. That helps when someone needs last year’s packshot or the line a client approved in a call.

For review rounds, share a film, key visual or folder with the client as a commenter. Shared links work without sign-up, and annotations let reviewers leave timestamped comments on video and audio, draw on a video frame, or draw on an image and attach a comment to the drawing. The team marks each comment completed as it is handled, so a feedback round works like a checklist. The review and approval page covers the workflow in more detail.

For final delivery, published pages are view-only and can be locked with password protection. Link analytics shows when each named recipient opened a link and how long they stayed, which is useful for pitch decks. On Team plans, self-writing docs keep a page per client with decisions, deliverables and open items.

Password protection and link analytics are included on Pro and Team plans, and self-writing docs on Team plans. See plans for teams.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best advertising agency in Hamburg?

It depends on the brief. On 2026 recognition, Saint Elmo’s topped THE BEST AGENCY annual ranking, Serviceplan Group led its all-time ranking, and Leagas Delaney Hamburg won Gold for its LORENZ and Stromberg campaign.

What happened to Kolle Rebbe?

Accenture bought Kolle Rebbe in 2018 and retired the brand in 2022, when it grouped its creative agencies under the Accenture Song name. The Hamburg team now works as Accenture Song.

Does BBDO have a Hamburg office?

BBDO closed its Hamburg office in 2019 and said the brand would focus on Düsseldorf and Berlin. WPP, Accenture Song and the Serviceplan Group all have Hamburg offices on this list.

What is the difference between an advertising agency and a creative agency in Hamburg?

The line is loose. This list favours network offices and agencies built around campaigns and media, while independent idea shops such as Jung von Matt and Philipp und Keuntje are on our list of creative agencies in Hamburg.

Which Hamburg agencies share an office?

Serviceplan and Saint Elmo’s both work from the Serviceplan Group’s House of Communication on Steinhöft, near the Elbe. Ogilvy’s Hamburg units, including thjnk and INGO Hamburg, keep their own offices and brand names.

Related lists

Advertising agencies in other cities: Berlin · London · New York · Chicago · Toronto

More in Hamburg: Creative agencies · Marketing agencies · Branding agencies · Social media agencies · Video production · Sound design

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