However, this year's awards, which was put back until nearly 10pm because of England's abysmal Euro 2008 qualifying defeat to Croatia, was especially disorderly.
As the night wore on, representatives from PHD and Universal McCann allowed some good-humoured goading to get out of hand, with both sides becoming more and more abusive.
The hostilities came to a head when a client on the side of Universal picked up an award and made a rude gesture to the PHD table - which inflamed them somewhat.
Luckily, owing to the quick intervention of two cool-headed bystanders, the argy-bargy failed to escalate into full-blown fisticuffs.