1
Grand Prix
Award
Company/Agency
Forster Communications
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Executive summary
Forster Communications is 100% focused on using communications to build a regenerative economy that works for people and planet. We don’t believe we can advise clients on sustainability and ESG if we are not acting ourselves. A founding UK B Corp and UN Global Compact signatory, we have won 11 Best-for-the-World Awards in recognition of our approach and impact in partnership with our clients, through our business and across our community. In 2019 we declared a climate emergency and in January 2020 we launched a bold strategy to do something about it - our Climate Positive Plan. An industry first, we chose to go beyond the emissions we produce to include our whole value chain and wider community. Two years on from launch and we have successfully achieved a major milestone of ensuring that all our suppliers have net-zero commitments. The ground-breaking plan, first described by some in the industry as “too risky” for including clients, has helped us to become one of the first carbon-neutral PR agencies in UK and encourage 52% of our clients to set carbon emission reduction goals. This action-led approach has meant in the last year alone we’ve reduced our carbon emissions by 4.1 tonnes, upped our recycling rate and since moving offices pre-pandemic we’ve produced significantly less waste (91%) and lowered our energy use (66%). This is on top of becoming a dairy, meat and paper-free workplace, divesting our pensions and banking from fossil fuels and incentivising employees and clients to travel more sustainably.
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1
Chair Award
Award
9
Best Performing Agency of the Year (1-49 employees)
Award
Company
scarlettabbott
Summary
We are an independently owned employee engagement consultancy, and we are here to change the world of work; for our own super-talented team here at scarlettabbott, for our amazing global clients including EY, eBay and Visa; and for, well, everyone.
We are making a world of difference for our industry and running an incredibly successful, and rapidly growing, business at the same time.
We’re very proud of having exceeded all our business objectives and smashed our aggressive growth targets, with revenue and profit up significantly year on year.
We’re creating a better world of work for clients by creating cultures where their people are empowered to be their best, feel their best and do their best. We’ve attracted 10 new clients in the last year including Sony, Coca-Cola and Booking.com.
We’re creating better worlds of work for everyone by sharing our thought-leadership and industry expertise free of charge via a market-leading report we write and publish called World Changers; by hosting webinars and podcasts on the key trends in the world employee engagement; and by writing for the likes of Forbes and Harvard Business Review.
And we are creating a better world of work for our team by focusing on diversity of thought, professional development, having a culture that supports and nurtures our people. And they love working here, with an eNPS of 92%.
We’ve had an amazing year in terms of performance and we can’t wait to share more with you…
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Entry credits
- Jeremy Petty, Managing Director, scarlettabbott
- Kate Went, Marketing Manager, scarlettabbott
- Lindsay Kohler, Lead Behavioural Scientist, scarlettabbott
- Russ Norton, Director of Consultancy, scarlettabbott
- Alastair Atkinson, Director of Consultancy, scarlettabbott
- Lisa Hawksworth, Director of Consultancy, scarlettabbott
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
AppAgent
Summary
AppAgent is a strategic and creatively-driven marketing partner that helps top mobile apps and games grow. They run paid UA, optimize stores, design static and video ad creatives, and build marketing analytics.
Since its foundation in 2016, AppAgent has believed that a holistic approach to mobile marketing pays off. And now, with IFDA depreciation, it’s necessary to combine strategy, data, and creativity to win new users.
Clients from 27 countries such as Huawei, Supercell (Clash of Clans and Clash Royale), GSN Games (Bingo Bash), and Babbel appreciate tangible results. 24 reviews and a rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars on Clutch—an independent platform that collects objective feedback from clients—confirm that.
In the last year, AppAgent’s team has leveled up its skill set in 3D animation and storytelling and updated its proprietary marketing analytics tool (ROY) and creative automation tool (CAT).
AppAgent is known for sharing knowledge within the mobile community through blog posts (170 to date), LinkedIn, conferences, and webinars (recordings and articles are stored on the Webinars and Talks section of their website). The most popular content produced in the last year includes the Mobile Ad Creatives eBook (https://appagent.com/mobile-ad-creatives...) and the Mobile Ad Eaters YouTube series (https://appagent.com/mobile-ad-eaters-sh...).
In 2021, AppAgent grew in revenue by 54% compared to the previous year.
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Entry credits
- Peter Fodor, Founder & CEO at AppAgent, AppAgent
Entry video
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Highly Commended
Company
Guerillascope
Summary
Guerillascope is an independent full-service media agency. For 21 years we’ve been supplying businesses with a flexible, transparent and proactive brand of planning and buying for advertisers that want to grow their own way.
Named one of Campaign’s best places to work in the media, advertising and creative industries for four years running, our culture empowers every member of staff to develop both professionally and personally.
And this approach delivers results, too. The past year has seen the company increase its revenue by 43% to enjoy its most successful year on record, with eight of the previous twelve months among our best ever. We’ve welcomed 29 new clients into the fold during this period, including Chip, the English Cricket Board, L’Occitane, Flarin, Mitchum, Pinter, Mr Q and Eborian.
This growing roster, allied with consistent media investments from some of our largest existing clients, a continued expansion into new partnerships and media channels, and the refinement of our pitching, optimisation and reporting processes, has propelled the business towards a future where we feel the sky really is the limit. An internal review found that we have won 40% of our new business pitches over the past year.
And, having recently become a member of the IPA Climate Charter to build on our two years of carbon neutrality, it’s a future we’re determined to contribute positively towards.
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Entry credits
- Stuart Bryan, Content Writer, Guerillascope
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Nominated
Company
WING
Summary
WING deliver the unexpected and unforgettable. We are a next generation creative agency, combining the flair of traditional ad agencies with the cost-conscious, time efficient processes of production companies. We are challenging the traditional ad agency model by being Faster, Better and Cheaper all at the same time. This is the future of branded content.
We create high value branded film content and TV commercials, intelligent distribution solutions and digital strategy for the world’s largest brands, rights holders and sponsors. In the past year that has included campaigns for Coca-Cola Olympics, Santander Champions League, Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1, Vodafone British and Irish Lions, McLaren, The National Theatre, The FA for the Euros and The LTA for Emma Raducanu’s US Open winning homecoming, live on the BBC.
Our ability to strategise and accommodate innovative ways of working alongside new technologies has strengthened our existing client base and enabled big wins in 2022, including Unicef, Formula E, Google, Aston Martin F1 Team and FIFA.
Our in-house team of 15 consistently conceptualise, create and deliver best in class content that pushes the boundaries of on-screen creativity and production value, delivering huge accountable business benefit for our clients. Despite working to tight budgets and time scales, we consistently demonstrate that we are a premium outfit who can take on and beat the bigger agency competitors on product and price.
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Entry credits
- Will Ingham, Creative Director/Founder, WING
- Tessa Ingham, COO, WING
- Molly Brooks, Senior Production Manager, WING
- Owen Cox, Senior Producer, WING
- Holly Denny, Editor, WING
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
Raptor Marketing
Summary
Raptor, the student marketing agency, was founded in 2015 with the mission to create experiences for students that are memorable, shareable and enjoyable. Since 2015, the agency has grown ten-fold in both team and revenue, entering our seventh year of business as one of the strongest yet.
Over the past year, we have celebrated successes across the agency allowing us to celebrate 2022 as our most successful year to date. Revenue growth over the year has grown by 50% through a combination of unprecedented client retention and new business wins. We have developed our offering to build strong digital and physical portfolios through upscaling our agency from solely experiential to hybrid campaigns that reach millions of students nationwide. Establishing our first joint venture with Amity Studios has allowed us to tap into youth culture uniquely through best-in-class production and animation opportunities. As well as this, our social initiatives have allowed us to provide purpose to our student network - through programmes such as the Raptor Academy allowing students nationwide to take their first step in marketing, and our sustainability programme putting the planet first within the development of our campaign strategies.
With a lively and youthful office team of 25, over 500 live SBAs and relationships with 70+ Universities across the country - the Raptor family is continuously growing allowing us to hone our craft in delivering campaigns with student insight at their heart, to bring to life our mission of creating meaningful brand experiences for students, with students.
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Entry credits
- Emily Lowes, Marketing Manager, Raptor Marketing
- David Burgman, Managing Director, Raptor Marketing
- Seamus Wright, Director and Head of Client Services, Raptor Marketing
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Nominated
Company
SHARE Creative
Summary
The last 12 months have been a wild ride for SHARE Creative, and seminal in the history of our young agency.
We’ve partnered with 8 new clients, including Formula 1, Diageo and Philips Hue creating work at a global scale with huge business impact across insight, strategy, creative and paid services.
We’ve expanded our relationships with long term partners like The North Face, Microsoft, and INEOS Grenadier, cementing our role as their go to agency for quality and innovation.
All this growth has meant our team size has more than doubled, taking us from just 21 people in August 2021, to 47 today - a team that is proudly equal in gender split, pay, and opportunity.
Additionally, we’ve gone on to create two new sub agency brands, our innovative research and technology department Capture Intelligence, and THYGA, our media department committed to emerging channels, techniques and technologies.
The incredible efforts of our team has led to the creation of many strategies, activations & campaigns, delivering not only fantastic results, but high approval - leading us to a Client NPS score of 69.
We’ve also kept a close eye on our culture and supported our staff with initiatives like hybrid working, our SHARE Cares program, and increased training, leading to a Staff NPS of 67.
We can't wait for the next 12 months!
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Entry credits
- , , SHARE Creative
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
Propellernet
Summary
We have experienced significant growth over the last 12 months with an increase of 148.1% in organic revenue. Whilst this growth has incredible benefits; it also comes with its own challenges as we strive to ensure that our impact across our people and planet is managed to always ensure sustainable growth.
Over the last 12 months, we have doubled down on our people and benefits programme; building on an already strong base that has seen us recognised as one of the UK’s leading workplaces for the last nine years. We have invested further time into our resource management to ensure that no one feels burnt out or that their workload is not manageable.
Finally, we know that we as a business have a wider impact on our local community so we invested heavily in our social and environmental policies. All this investment means that whilst the agency has grown by 30% in headcount, we have maintained our core values and 100% staff satisfaction. This has led to staff testimonials such as the following, which must be the sign of a well-performing, innovative and people-focused agency,
“The policies and benefits we have in place at Propellernet are excellent. It's great to feel truly cared for, no matter what life may throw our way - I know I'm protected and looked after by the company!”
GPTW, 2022
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Entry credits
- Sam Zindel, MD, Propellernet
- James Sandford, MD, Propellernet
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Nominated
Company
Manifest
Summary
The last 12 months have been nothing short of, well, unprecedented (we said it). In and out of COVID restrictions, brands looking to recover, and consumer behaviours becoming more conscious. At a time when most agencies were looking to consolidate and take stock, Manifest set an objective to grow by 30%, expand its team to incorporate new creative skillsets, and to evolve into a new agency proposition better equipped for a post-pandemic world. Ultimately, we did all of that and more.
Agency fees grew by over 40%, driven by strategic projects, expansion of existing briefs into multiple creative disciplines, attracting new clients through an evolved proposition and expanding our horizons to the Southern Hemisphere by opening an office in Melbourne, Australia.
Our profit grew by record levels, we picked up more than 20 industry accolades and awards, we attracted some of the world’s most sought-after creative talent and we worked with 15 incredible new brands we’re proud to call partners.
Perhaps most importantly, we did all of the above through the pursuit of a single agency mission: to build brands that change the world.
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Entry credits
- Ali Maynard James, Managing Partner, Manifest
- Bec Chelin, Managing Director, Manifest
- Julian Obubo, Partner, Manifest
- Tom Winterton, Director, Manifest
- Alex Myers, CEO, Manifest
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
No Brainer Agency
Summary
No Brainer was created and incorporated in April 2015, with Lee and Gary boot-strapping and building the agency from scratch. Over the year period of these awards, we’ve bounced back brilliantly from Covid and are now exceeding all our expected projections across revenues/profits, staff retention, client retention, client growth, and service development.
We’ve achieved some stand-out results by being completely focused on our team and their wellbeing; improving our proposition; boosting our services; exceeding client expectations; and growing new business in the right markets.
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Entry credits
- Hannah Jones, Senior Account Manager, No Brainer
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7
Best Performing Agency of the Year (50-149 employees)
Nominated
Company
eight&four
Summary
eight&four is a performance driven 360 social & creative agency. We list leading global luxury brands such as Genesis (Hyundai), Sandals, Candy Crush & Cameo amongst our client base. We are 57 people strong, and our staff retention is 91%+ for the last 12 months.
After a challenging Covid 2020, eight&four rebounded to grow from a £2.5m fee income business in 2020 to a forecasted £6.8m+ 2022 fee income business, operating at a 35%+ margin.
This turbo growth off the back of Covid has been testament to our ability to pivot into new sectors as our beloved Travel & Hospitality sectors struggled through the Covid pandemic.
We were the small agency wildcard and beat much larger social media agencies to become Genesis’ (Hyundai) Lead European Social & Content agency partner in April 2021. In October ’21 we won the Global Content and Social Consultancy support retainer for Sandals, and in 2021 we also re-launched a members only royalty program designed to reward Candy Crush Saga’s top players.
We have used the learnings from the pandemic to embed progressive working cultures in our business and have been named in Campaign’s Top 50 Places to Work in marketing for 4 years in a row. Culture and employee experience are taken seriously at eight&four, and we’re regularly engaging with employees to sense check problems and innovate new cultural solutions across the business.
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Entry credits
- Amy McCulloch, MD, eight&four
- Alex Engert, Director, eight&four
- Kate Ross, MD, eight&four
- Tiffany Tant-Bevin, Director, eight&four
- Patricia Lefebure, Creative Director, eight&four
- Ines Casas, Social Director, eight&four
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
Porter Novelli
Summary
Porter Novelli celebrates its 50th birthday this year with one of the biggest performance stories in the industry. We were in decline. We needed to reinvent ourselves externally and refresh our proposition to drive top line gains while re-engineering the culture internally. An agency narrative can’t change without structural reform, leadership change and honesty. So, this is what we did – we completely overhauled the poetry and plumbing.
It’s hard being mid-sized and seemingly ‘middle of the road’ and challenging to innovate when you are part of a network. Deal flow doesn’t just happen naturally and it’s hard to execute change with agility. Yet we did it. We overhauled who we were and transformed ourselves
We have been quietly brilliant for too long and now Porter Novelli is unashamedly on fire
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Entry credits
- sarah shilling, EVP, Porter Novelli
- Chris Mullan , Head of Marketing , porter novelli
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
Stein IAS
Summary
2021 primed the world’s B2B brands to grow and build on the momentum developed and impact delivered during the pandemic. Yet, barriers persist. Businesses have long separated “brand” from “demand.” But research from the Ehrenberg Bass Institute clearly indicates a blended investment in long-term brand-building and short-term demand generation drives outperformance.
So, we doubled-down on our specialism as the global brand-to-demand (B2D) agency for the world’s B2B enterprises, strengthening our B2D offering to drive client growth and unlock opportunities of own.
Launching our Original Growth Model, we introduced a framework that intertwines brand and demand marketing for truly connected customer experiences and higher ROMI.
We invested in AI tools and tech, innovating self-learning media plans that optimize themselves, from top of funnel to bottom.
We developed a WARC-endorsed process to drive creative effectiveness, empowering clients like Trelleborg and Lexmark to do just that: Trelleborg claimed the first-ever WARC Effectiveness Award for B2B at Cannes in 2021, and Lexmark took it home in 2022!
We developed B2D mastery internally as well – creating a more equitable workplace via our E.Q. DEI Committee…supporting skills development to ensure superior work across departments…and nurturing the future workforce as part of the ANA Educational Foundation.
Doubling down on B2D ushered in a second straight record-setting year in client effectiveness and impact, new business wins, thought leadership and industry recognition, and agency growth. It’s why B2B leaders are turning to the B2D leader to break down brand and demand silos to outperform in their markets.
Entry credits
- The Stein, IAS, Team
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
Redwood BBDO
Summary
Rapid change is the kind of thing that happens to new agencies. But what about if you are a 39-year old with revenues well above £10M?
To transform a mature business in a single year would require truly remarkable performance. How about…
• high double-digit revenue growth • 6 new clients, zero losses • 40% headcount increase
At the same time we…
• Significantly grew our creative services remit with Google worldwide
• Elevated to lead agency for a legendary auto brand and for one of the world’s biggest B2B names
• Became the fastest growing agency in BBDO Europe
• Opened a satellite office in New York
So how does an old agency perform like a start-up? You relaunch as a new Creative Studio called REDWOOD BBDO.
Our strategy was to disrupt traditional agencies with a new value proposition called Better, Faster, Cheaper. Many people dismiss “good, fast, cheap” as a client myth. We made it an aiming point.
The promise of Better, Faster, Cheaper was delivered through RWD Studios, the film production arm we launched in 2021. In the past 12 months, RWD Studios has become a powerhouse, overseeing...
• 59 productions • 132 shoots • 20+ international locations • 12.2 hours of film produced
We also won 6 new clients, registered YOY growth on every single account, and our client referral rating hit a historic high.
Through a very testing period for the industry, we're proud to have transformed and grown.
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Entry credits
- Colin Kennedy, CEO, Redwood BBDO
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Award
Company
Cactus
Summary
Hi, we’re Cactus. We’re an independent creative agency dedicated to growing brands that help people thrive in their lives. Founded on the belief that small agency creativity can solve the world’s biggest problems, and a commitment to work exclusively for clients we believe in - purposeful brands, causes, and non-profits that make the world a better place. 2021 was a notable year for our agency - the best year in our 32 year history, actually. Our agency grew by 21%, our agency profit grew by 28% and we won the biggest account in the agency’s history. We made some amazing work with all of our amazing clients, and are continuing to find new ways to bring our Belief and Behavior Design® Methodology into the world - not to mention nearly doubling our headcount of clever Cacti.
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Entry credits
- Joe Conrad, Founder & CEO, Cactus
- Norm Shearer, Partner & CCO, Cactus
- Jeff Graham, President & CMO, Cactus
- Brian Watson, ECD, Cactus
- Lisa Van Someren, VP, Project Management, Cactus
- Ainslie Fortune, VP, Account Leadership, Cactus
- Chris Schewmake, VP, Comms Strategy & Media, Cactus
- Kelly Rowntree, VP, Chief Strategy Officer, Cactus
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
The Keenfolks
Summary
The Keenfolks represent an idea for change. Born out of a shared vision for innovation and followed through with relentless passion.
In 2018 we founded The Keenfolks - a hybrid between consultancy, agency, and technology startup and launched a new category: Digital Gap Management.
In the 4 years since launching The Keenfolks, we have consistently grown revenues each year. In 2018, we achieved €1.4M revenue, €2.9M revenue in 2019, €5.2M revenue in 2020, and 7M in 2021.
We have achieved a stellar reputation and increased our client portfolio by 75%. Our work with Merck was recognized and rewarded with the “AboutPharma” Digital Award and we were awarded as Agency of the Year by The Digiday Marketing and Advertising Awards Europe.
In 2021 we closed contracts with Fortune 500 multinationals such as Johnson & Johnson, The Coca-Cola Company, Femsa, Mars Corporation, Reckitt, Kelloggs, Danone, and ISDIN.
Our “Glo-cal” approach has led to us expanding our operations to an additional seven countries, with an increased service localization led by our regional teams.
We have delivered campaigns in 40 counties, 20 languages, and across five continents from our Barcelona and Mexico city powerhouses and home offices. We grew our multi-disciplinary team of Keenfolks by 375% compared to 2018. And achieved 4.3 out of 5 team happiness and engagement rate.
Our commitment to delivering the best results for our clients has seen us expand our services to include big data strategies, data visualisation, descriptive and predictive analytics, machine learning, and automation.
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Entry credits
- Juan Manuel Patiño Herrera , EURAM & MarTech Director, The Keenfolks
- Judith Vila, LATAM BUD, The Keenfolks
- Oleksandra Buhakova, Product Marketing Director, The Keenfolsk
- Alfonso Villegas, Data & AI Director, The Keenfolks
- Gerard Anguela Martinez, Global Content Marketing Hub Director , The Keenfolks
- Juan Salvador Lopez Garcia, Account Director, The Keenfolks
- Gabriel Navarro, Account Dircetor, The Keenfolks
- Varun Thirtha , Director of Marketing Intelligence & USA Development , The Keenfolks
Entry video
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Highly Commended
Company
Zulu Alpha Kilo
Summary
Zulu Alpha Kilo believes in colouring outside the lines. In 2021, that meant evolving our leadership structure, challenging an industry taboo, making meaningful contributions to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, launching a Vancouver office with two new award-winning ECDs, and a New York office with one of America’s most highly recognized creative directors.
With our 2021 creative output, we went where agencies don’t normally go, from designing a turban that acts like a helmet for Sikh motorcycle riders to creating beer packaging that teaches you how to play guitar; from recreating a WWII rations kit that introduces the younger generation to the hardships of war to treating pizza like a financial investment.
Major trade publications named us their agency of the year. Zulu was the Drum UK’s AOY, Campaign US Independent AOY and Campaign Global’s AOY. And, at Ad Age’s Small Agency of the year awards, we won silver International AOY, and the most golds of any agency in the B2B, Digital campaign and Media campaign of the year categories.
To bring attention to the growing industry practice of creating fake work just for the purpose of winning awards, Zulu took out a two-page ad in Canada’s leading marketing magazine with the headline, “Is it more important for this ad to persuade its target audience, or a judge at Cannes?”
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Entry credits
- Zak Mroueh, Chief Creative Officer & Chairman , Zulu Alpha Kilo
- Mike Sutton, President & CEO, Zulu Alpha Kilo
- Amanda Mroueh, Director of Operations, Zulu Alpha Kilo
- David So, CFO & Chief Operating Officer, Zulu Alpha Kilo
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7
Best Performing Agency of the Year (150+ employees)
Highly Commended
Company
The Marketing Practice
Summary
Our vision is to change the B2B marketing services industry to make it work better for clients and agency teams. This year we have made big strides towards our twin goals:
• To transform the client-agency partnership to make it more customer-centric and judged on commercial impact
• To radically improve the world of work in an agency by promoting psychological safety, diversity and inclusion
Over the past 12 months, we’ve made four acquisitions, bringing the best B2B specialists together under one bold new brand.
We have developed an agile operating model that means we can bring these specialists together in multi-skilled teams with an intense focus on the customer and responsibility for outcomes, not just outputs; supporting our clients from brand to demand. We call it the growth engine.
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Entry credits
- N/A N/A, N/A, N/A
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Nominated
Company
NP Digital
Summary
NP Digital was co-founded in 2017 by Neil Patel – a New York Times Best Selling Author and one of the world’s most influential marketers according to The Wall Street Journal and Forbes. For over two decades Neil has been providing consulting and thought-leadership to the business and marketing community. NP Digital is the agency that brings his passion, innovation and insights to life for brands across the globe. We’re a performance marketing agency built by marketers, for marketers.
In 2021 NP Digital (NPD) was named the #6 fastest growing agency according to Adweek. The #21 fastest growing private company according to Inc. 5000. The year 2021 brought 106% increase in global full-time employees YOY, the team is now over 700 strong with office expansion in the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. 2021 brought a 169% increase in YOY revenue, closing at just over $70MM. Paid media spend was up 372% YOY and global account wins increased our non-US revenue by 2,862%.
2022 is proving to be another growth year for NPD. We closed our first acquisition (Answer The Public out of the UK), we were added to Inc.'s Best Workplace list, we've hired 160 new employees in the fist half of 2022 and our 2022 revenue forecast has us reaching $114MM by the end of the year (up 63% YoY).
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Entry credits
- Michael Gullaksen, CEO, NP Digital
- Paul Darling, Global CFO, NP Digital
- Karen Belin, VP of Data, Analytics & Insights, NP Digital
- Alison Moser, VP, Client Services, NP Digital
- Chris Moreno, SVP, Paid Media, NP Digital
- David Shapiro, SVP, Earned Media, NP Digital
- Brooke Hess, VP, Paid Media, NP Digital
- Mike Grehan, SVP, Corporate Comms, NP Digital
- Nikki Lam, Sr. Director, Earned Media, NP Digital
- Michelle Scully, VP, Human Resources, NP Digital
Entry video
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Award
Company
OLIVER
Summary
OLIVER has come of age on the global stage. Despite pioneering the world’s most successful in-house agency model, it is showing itself to be capable of so much more.
OLIVER helps brands drive digital growth, transform marketing ecosystems, and connect teams and creativity globally. Consequently, in 2021, the company won Silver on Campaign's Global Digital Innovation Agency of the Year and Gold on Customer Engagement Agency of the Year, and In-house Agency of the Year.
As first-responders, OLIVER helped global clients adapt rapidly through the pandemic and lockdown changes. It took a transformative approach to help them navigate uncertainty.
As lockdown restrictions eased up, OLIVER helped brands develop a broader range of marketing activities. This included brand building, social-commerce, live-commerce, connected design and service design. Its clients therefore enjoyed streamlined and connected customer experiences, while we delivered award-winning results. OLIVER was named Agency of the Year seven times in markets such as Brazil, US, EMEA and Indonesia in 2021.
In addition, the company secured thirty-seven new clients and broadened its scope with existing brands. On average, OLIVER saved clients thirty percent on their marketing expenditure.
OLIVER continues to spearhead industry improvements with regards to creating a fair and equitable work environment. We won several major accolades for our progressive DE&I policies, including The Sunday Times’ ‘Best Places to Work’.
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Entry credits
- Amina Folarin, Chief Inclusion & People Officer, OLIVER
- Sharon Whale, Deputy Chief Executive Officer , OLIVER
- Rod Sobral, Global Chief Creative Officer, OLIVER
- Jane Aikman, Group Director and Group Chief Operating Officer , OLIVER
- Jason Bailis, Global Chief Operating Officer , OLIVER
- Matt Baldwin, Chief Executive Officer EMEA , OLIVER
- Peter Kuhn, Chief Executive Officer North America , OLIVER
- Rich Stainer, Chief Executive Officer Global Clients , OLIVER
- Simon Martin, Founder and Chief Executive , OLIVER
- Rachel Hatton, Chief Strategy Officer, OLIVER
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
mSix&Partners
Summary
At mSix&Partners, we measure our success across the triple bottom line: People, Planet & Profit. These three pillars are the structure of our 5 year plan, our global offsites and our weekly leadership meetings.
We have made significant progress across all three: it’s thanks to this balanced approach that we’ve seen record growth for a fourth consecutive year. In 2021, our best performing year yet, we made sure our success does not come at any cost through a series of conscious choices and investments.
We’ve reimagined how we attract & retain talent by founding The&Academy, a new apprenticeship programme with a dedicated campus in Birmingham to raise the next generation of digital specialists from diverse, under-represented backgrounds.
We introduced a DEI hiring panel to tackle collective blindness within the industry, which led to rejecting a leadership hire and turning down two significant pitches for clients who did not share our values.
We are investing in a more sustainable future, rolling out our media carbon calculator and client carbon charters. We also opened a data ethics practice to help clients navigate audience data usage for long term sustainability.
We continued to invest in career development and workplace wellbeing to achieve IPA Platinum Accreditation and featuring in Campaign’s Best Places to Work.
In summary, we believe our success is due to our diverse talent, all working in partnership to drive change and growth for our clients across People, Planet & Profit.
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Entry credits
- Jack Swayne, Global CEO, mSix&Partners
- Jess Burley, Executive Chair , mSix&Partners
- Dan Whitmarsh, Global CSO, mSix&Partners
- Jessica Anderson-Ramshall, Global Head of People , mSix&Partners
- Poppy Barnes, Head of Marketing , mSix&Partners
- Ross Barnes, Global CTO, mSix&Partners
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Nominated
Company
RAPP
Summary
At RAPP, we stand up for individuality. We work with our clients to innovate their marketing on an individual level, helping shape acceleration plans by rethinking their model, their communications, and even their audience.
We know brands are built from a million little experiences and every single touchpoint has the power to impact and engage when adapted to the individual. It’s why we believe fusing data with technology, and a whole heap of creativity, is the only way to invent the future of marketing. RAPP, and our award-winning data and technology division, Code Worldwide, are doing this day in, day out.
This year we welcomed new clients such as O2, after a hotly contested customer engagement pitch; and Mercedes Benz where we were part of the Omnicom team that won the biggest pitch of the decade by reimagining the future of the luxury automotive customer experience.
Our revenue increased and we didn’t just smash our new business target – we quadrupled it. And we used our data-led creativity to produce award-winning work taking home the most gold DMAs.
We built a strong culture that stands up for the individual – with recognition coming from our IPA Platinum status. We championed our people as they stood up for the issues we care about as a business – ending violence against women, anti-racism, and sustainability. We introduced a diversity strategist to make sure our work was inclusive of our client's customers; whilst also prioritising the all-important sustainability lens.
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Entry credits
- Chris Freeland, Executive Chairman, RAPP
- Gabby Ludzker, CEO, RAPP
- Mark Hastings, Managing Director, Code Worldwide
- Caroline Parkes, Chief Strategy Officer, RAPP
- Al Mackie, Chief Creative Officer, RAPP
- Ed Freed, Global Chief Transformation Officer, RAPP
- Andy Rowe, Chief Marketing Sciences Officer , RAPP
- Paul Tomlinson, Group Chief Financial Officer , RAPP
- Ursula Marchese, Global Chief Talent Officer, RAPP
- Carolyn Stebbings, hief Operating & Inclusion Officer, RAPP
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Highly Commended
Company
Critical Mass
Summary
Hi there,
we’re Critical Mass (but our friends call us CM—please call us CM). We've had
an incredible year in terms of performance, and we're grateful, but not mystified.
We design what brands need and what their customers love—unparalleled brand
experiences that connect with people—and digital is how we do it. Our clients
depend on us to help them connect, enhance, and elevate their digital
ecosystems to meet the demands of today's customers.
In our
entry, we had to work hard to fit into 1,250 words a fraction of the reasons
why CM is such a high-performing agency, so we focused on:
- Some key facts and figures: From revenue growth, to wins, to
headcount and beyond, we've got some serious momentum.
- Company Worth Keeping: We've got the best client list we've ever
had, and they stick with us (7-year average client tenure).
- Real-world innovation: We're creating services the world needs
right now—Performance CX, ArtBot, Quotient. Behind those names, are some
very strategic solutions for today's most intractable brand and business
problems.
- Wins: We've had some great ones over the past 12 months.
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: DE&I is a priority for every
single person at CM, from the CEO on down. High expectations are mirrored
by high accountability, as well as meaningful programs and initiatives.
- Don't take our word for it: our clients will be the first to say
that we deliver big—and for this award, they sent testimonials!
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Entry credits
- Chris Gokiert , CEO, Critical Mass
- Andrea Lennon, President, Critical Mass
- Grant Owens, CSO, Critical Mass
- Val Carlson, CCO, Critical Mass
- John McLaughlin, COO, Critical Mass
- Lee Tamkee, CFO, Critical Mass
- Sara Anhorn, Chief Talent Officer, Critical Mass
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Nominated
Company
VMLY&R
Summary
N/A
Entry image
Entry credits
- Jamie Dierking, Director, Communications, VMLY&R
Entry video
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1
Best Performing Agency Group of the Year
Award
Company
UNLIMITED
Summary
We are a best-in-class performance agency.
We have best-in-class, upper quartile client satisfaction.
We have a happy and engaged workforce.
Our superpower is our deeper human understanding.
We are UNLIMITED.
Together we’re an insight-led, tech-enabled agency group focused on delivering better business outcomes for clients. Interconnected capabilities enable us to drive sales, performance, and ROI through our deep understanding of human behaviour at speed and at scale via 600 experts across four divisions: Marketing, Communications, Insight & Analytics, Digital Transformation.
What sets us apart is our Human Understanding Lab. It’s at the heart of everything we do. No one else has it, and it’s won us some of the biggest contracts in the UK. Our 120 experts in neuro, behavioural, and data science use cutting-edge tools to deliver unique, accurate insight. Our marketing experts use this to define strategy and drive performance across increasingly complex customer journeys.
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Unlimited 1.eps
Entry credits
- Victoria Allen, EA, UNLIMITED
- Erris de Stacpoole, PR Director , UNLIMITED
- Faye Hawkins , CRO, UNLIMITED
- Tim Bonnet, President , UNLIMITED
- Tim Hassett, Group CEO, UNLIMITED
- Savanna-Lee Stevens , Designer , UNLIMITED
Entry video
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5
Best Response to Change
Nominated
Company
Gravity Global
Summary
A major transformation in how we fly is being imagineered by Embraer to achieve net zero by 2050.
Embraer, has pledged to solve this enormous industry challenge and their goal was to share their vision with the global aviation community.
In late November 2021, they unveiled four concept regional aircraft powered by new propulsion technologies and renewable energies.
Gravity Global was tasked with launching this exciting programme – and how it was presented to a worldwide audience needed to be as bold and innovative as the concept aircraft.
As well as creating the ‘Energia’ name and an eye-catching aircraft livery, the Gravity team developed a full campaign including content and social, culminating in a spectacular webcast event, broadcast live from studios in Sao Paulo and London!
Each of the Energia aircraft were shown as 3D holograms for impact.
This campaign deserves to win, as it achieved its objective of positioning Embraer as a leader in aviation sustainability and by using the latest digital techniques captured the imagination of the aviation industry without having to show physical aircraft. The programme successfully achieved market engagement for the Energia programme, improving positive sentiment for Embraer and leadership in sustainability from 28.71% to 70.88%
Entry credits
- Steve Long, Creative Director, Gravity Global
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
SCOOP & SPOON
Summary
The global pandemic hit some industry sectors harder than others. At SCOOP & SPOON many of our clients operated in the hospitality and automotive sectors, and these were two industries that suffered significantly. As our clients scaled back their operations to weather the storm of travel restrictions and the cancellation of in-person events, our sales dropped by 80 %. Many businesses faltered, some failed completely, but we knew that if we were to survive this storm we would need to flex. We couldn’t simply wait for the world around us to return to normal, instead we had to change to meet it, and that meant taking a long hard look in the mirror at what we do, what was working well in these new and uncertain times, and what needed to change. We entered into a period of introspection, and examined the different skills, competencies, services and products that we offer as a business. Breaking down the different and seemingly disparate products, services and competencies, we then reunited them as a modules that could be brought together quickly and affordably in different configurations to meet the changing needs of our clients. We packaged this as a fully flexible, completely customizable platform – The SCOOP River™ Marketing Platform – that catered to every aspect of the client’s marketing needs and integrated with their existing value chain.
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Entry credits
- Anna Habermann, Marketing Director, SCOOP & SPOON
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Nominated
Company
GSD&M
Summary
Legislative change in Texas has long been under a microscope, with aggressive conservative policies taking root that are often a bellwhether for the direction of the U.S. as a whole. At GSD&M, based in Austin, TX, we use our talents as an agency to fight against change we see as regressive and limiting to people living the lives they want and deserve.
In early May, the Supreme Court draft opinion leaked suggesting the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling on abortion rights may soon be overturned. Texas is a trigger state and became one of the first to deny women access to an abortion.
We were compelled to quickly respond. Teams from across the agency came together to conceptualize a campaign that launched in 48 hours following the leaked decision.
“Happy Forced Mother’s Day” launched just before Mother’s Day weekend. The digital Mother’s Day card, website and social campaign shared resources for people to fight for a woman’s right to choose.
While many remained silent and some posted statements on social, GSD&M put its creative talents to work, with employees volunteering their time and talent to work after hours to quickly make their voices heard.
This was the first agency creative response to the overturned Roe v. Wade decision and as of writing remains the only creative campaign created solely by an agency in response to this landmark and regressive legislation.
We care deeply and fight the good fight in Texas.
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Entry credits
- Duff Stewart, Chief Executive Officer, GSD&M
- Jay Russell, Chief Creative Officer, GSD&M
- Keisha Townsend-Taitt, Chief Inclusion Officer, GSD&M
- Roy Spence, Chairman of the Board, GSD&M
- Maria DAmato, Executive Creative Director, GSD&M
- Leigh Browne, Creative Director, GSD&M
- Jon Williamson, Creative Director, AD, GSD&M
- Tori Reneker, Creative Director/XD, GSD&M
- Kim Faulkner, Director of Engineering, GSD&M
- Diego Saenz, Associate Creative Director, AD, GSD&M
- Melissa Severin, SVP, Communications, GSD&M
- Jack Epsteen, SVP/Director of Production, GSD&M
- Liz Hamel, Sr. Studio Artist, GSD&M
- Daniel Rodriguez, Digital Retoucher, GSD&M
- Helena Abbing, Sr. Print Producer, GSD&M
- Marilyn Rose, Sr. Art Producer, GSD&M
- Jacob Stern, Creative Director, Editor, GSD&M
- Amanda Talmadge, Director Digital Production, GSD&M
- Sophie Maresh, Digital Designer, GSD&M
- Jay Esteves, Experience Strategist, GSD&M
- Dakota Lowe, Senior Social Strategist, GSD&M
- Elizabeth Stelling, Associate Director, GSD&M
- Marcela Masso, Bilingual Proofreader, GSD&M
- Denny House, Sr. Word Processor, GSD&M
- Joseph Kantar, Technical QA Engineer, GSD&M
- Brenda Rivera, Financial Sys Tech Specialist, GSD&M
- Craig Cooper, Senior Enterprise Systems Manager, GSD&M
- Shipra Arora, VP/Director Analytics, GSD&M
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Nominated
Company
Rain the Growth Agency
Summary
Rain the Growth Agency, ranked as one of the top independent (and women-led) advertising agencies in the nation, employed an innovative solution to advance its workplace equity and to reimagine how remote teams collaborate. As a result of the permanent effects of pandemic workplace shifts and a move to fully remote operations, the agency launched a Pop-Up Office Initiative in December of 2021 aimed at attracting the best talent and enriching company culture for its employees, deemed “CREW” members, with a focus on flexibility, collaboration, high tech utilization and reducing their carbon footprint due to the decrease in physical space used. Rather than forcing its employees to return to one general office, the agency responded to the new telework opportunities by allowing its CREW to report to work at locations convenient to them. Following its adoption of this successful new business model, the agency saw more contented employees, decreased attrition rates and more roles to fill than ever before.
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Entry credits
- Michelle Cardinal, CEO + Co-Founder, Rain the Growth Agency
- Jane Crisan, President + COO, Rain the Growth Agency
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Nominated
Company
Copy House
Summary
As Covid-19 struck the world, the marketing industry was clutching at straws. A small content marketing agency, Copy House, needed to take action to guarantee its survival.
Managing Director and Owner of Copy House, Kathryn Strachan, refused to put her team on furlough. Instead, she conducted thorough market research to reposition the company into a niche sector that required Copy House's services.
To guarantee a successful rebrand, Kathryn and her team updated the Copy House website, restructured their marketing campaigns and built relationships within their niche area.
This success landed in a 900% company growth, the introduction of new services, an expansion to Europe and Kathryn grew her team from a team of 5 to 35 and counting in the short space of 6 months.
With such substantial growth came growing pains - realising that Copy House’s processes were quickly out of date. To resolve this, Kathryn and Copy House's senior leaders have successfully implemented processes to streamline Copy House's services and ensure the planet, people and profits are at the forefront of all business decisions after Covid-19 recovery.
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Entry credits
- Kinga Kusak, Marketing Manager, Copy House
- Laura Bresolin, Business Development Manager & Head of Strategic Partnerships, Copy house
- Steven Smith, Head of Operations, Copy House
- Dani Mathieu, Client Services Director, Copy House
- Richard Braggins, Content Director, Copy House
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5
Best Marketing Strategy
Highly Commended
Company
Stein IAS
Stein IAS’ strategy is to make B2B marketing more effective by promoting creativity as a business growth driver – because if a rising creative tide lifts all B2B boats, ours will rise highest. B2B marketing doesn’t have to be ordinary, yet so much of it is. It could be exponentially more effective if it entertained and inspired.
In 2021/22, we pushed our marketing strategy of championing B2B creative effectiveness to new heights – and we’re winning friends, influencing the industry and bringing in more business than ever before.
For years, we’ve lobbied the Lions to add B2B as a category. Our efforts finally bore fruit with the launch of the Creative B2B Lions at the 2022 Cannes Festival. Securing this achievement in fall of 2021, we activated an all-out marketing strategy:
- Hosting our most star-studded, best-attended event ever – focused on the rising tide of creativity in B2B
- Taking marketers into the B2B metaverse at ANA Masters of B2B Marketing
- Publishing a whitepaper with WARC at Cannes on creative effectiveness in B2B
- WARC endorsing our IP – the Big Long Idea – as an official vehicle to climb the B2B Effectiveness Ladder
Then we brought our strategy to the festival – having the extreme honor of being on the inaugural B2B jury and on stage at the Palais promoting the creative effectiveness of Big Long Ideas.
We’re proud to be the strongest voice for B2B creative effectiveness. We’re even prouder to be recognized for it.
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Entry credits
- The Stein, IAS, Team
Entry video
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Award
Company
Fanbytes by Brainlabs
As a smaller social and influencer marketing agency, Fanbytes faces massive competition. Created only 6 years ago by three young black founders with a vision to help brands engage Gen Z, we have always been up against bigger and more established players.
Despite this, we’ve grown to become one of the most well-known and regarded agencies in this country, and a big part of the reason for this is the creative and results-driven in-house Marketing team.
The way our team operates is through taking the best of B2B marketing (lead nurturing programmes), and B2C marketing (brand awareness campaigns). We implement this through a highly effective, diverse marketing plan, utilising events, content, email, digital, social, partnerships, SEO and PR.
Highlights include creating our own events programme (Fanbytes LIVE attracted over 350 sign ups). We’ve also become known for our insights with whitepapers and reports downloaded by thousands of people. We overhauled our social media, website, CRM and strategy, as well as implementing ROI tracking, forecasting, and integration with our Sales team.
Between July 2021 and July 2022, we have received invitations to pitch from some of the world’s biggest brands, and Marketing successfully attracted our four biggest new clients. Our ROMI between June 2021 and June 2022 sits at £7.60, and we even won “Best Large Influencer Marketing Agency” at the 2022 Influencer Marketing Awards!
With only a small team of five we've worked incredibly hard to raise our agency profile, contributing to our exciting acquisition by global agency, Brainlabs.
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Entry credits
- Joanna Hughston, Head of Marketing, Fanbytes by Brainlabs
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
MOI GLOBAL
Heading into 2022 we had aggressive growth goals for the agency. To achieve these goals, we had to completely change our GTM strategy. It started with revising the team’s positioning within the agency and getting buy in from Leadership. Simply put, the Growth team would be focused on creating and capturing demand for key business areas in 2022. It’s no longer about volume, but the total impact of our brand, measured by engagement, not by leads generated.
With the revised GTM strategy, we had to change the way we worked. In the world of agencies, the statement, “the cobbler’s kids have no shoes,” rings true. Client work comes first, which means any growth initiatives can be deprioritized. Because of this, we had to shift to an agile marketing model that focuses on creating scalable programs to maximize efficiencies and reduce dependency on internal resources.
To support our GTM strategy and new marketing model, we created a 5-point plan aligned to the revised position of the team and the agile approach we are taking for our programs.
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Entry credits
- AMY ALEXANDER, GLOBAL VP OF GROWTH, MOI GLOBAL
- JACKIE MICUCCI, SR MANAGER, PARTNER & AGENCY MARKETING, MOI GLOBAL
- JADE PARKINSON, GLOBAL GROWTH MANAGER, MOI GLOBAL
- SHANNON-MARIE COOPER, SENIOR MARKETING EXECUTIVE, MOI GLOBAL
- CLAIRE PRESCOTT, ASSOCIATE MARKETING MANAGER, MOI GLOBAL
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Nominated
Company
LogicLogicMagic Ltd
LogicLogicMagic was founded in 2020, to occupy a perceived gap in the B2B agency technology sector. Delivering a B2C style of creativity for B2B technology organisations. Building personality into technology brands, in a way that generates demand then drives technology sales and adoption. A proven, more effective approach than the literal, product-focused campaigns that pervade the sector.
B2B agencies are B2B brands too, so LogicLogicMagic led by example with our own marketing, using our Literal + Lateral = Memorable methodology to deliver the 'Mogic's World' campaign. It combined a brand film, hero content assets and demand generation elements, supported by event sponsorship, to attract prospective technology marketers. Integrated content campaign assets utilised Mogic, our Scottish unicorn and fluent brand character asset, to clearly set out the agency methodology.
The content assets acted as natural filters, improving the quality of our leads. If how we creatively marketed ourselves resonated with prospects, there was a much higher chance of producing great work together. The combined campaign effect has generated £500K in pipeline for the agency. The campaign ROI to date is 37:1, helping establish LogicLogicMagic as the fastest growing B2B agency in the UK, according to the 2022 B2B Marketing benchmarking survey. Most importantly it gives prospects faith that we follow our own advice when it comes to marketing strategies and tactics, balancing long term brand activity with short term activations across multiple channels.
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Entry credits
- Alistair Ross, Creative Partner, LogicLogicMagic
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
StackAdapt
Reflect Digital’s client, Opayo, was looking to increase overall conversions in channels that differed from their typical paid search campaigns, without compromising on cost. Working with StackAdapt as a programmatic partner, Reflect Digital was able to drive quality site traffic and keep costs low as they beat their performance benchmarks.
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Entry credits
- Raina Roberts, Sales Manager , StackAdapt
- Khaled Alfangary, Senior Account Manager, StackAdapt
- Rob Bridgens, Head of Paid Media, StackAdapt
Entry video
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2
Business Transformation Strategy
Highly Commended
Company
Porter Novelli
Summary
Porter Novelli celebrates its 50th birthday this year with one of the biggest transformation stories in the industry. We were stalling. We needed to reinvent ourselves externally and refresh our proposition to drive top line gains while re-engineering the culture internally. An agency narrative can’t change without structural reform, leadership change and honesty. So, this is what we did – we completely overhauled the poetry and plumbing.
It’s hard being mid-sized and seemingly ‘middle of the road’ and challenging to innovate when you are part of a network. Deal flow doesn’t just happen naturally and it’s hard to execute change with agility. Yet we did it. We overhauled who we were and transformed ourselves
We have been quietly brilliant for too long and now Porter Novelli is unashamedly on fire.
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Entry credits
- Sarah Shilling, EVP, Porter Novelli
- Fenella Grey, Managing Director , Porter Novelli
Entry video
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Award
Company
MAS
Summary
This year MAS focused on completely rebranding to show everyone our authentic creative selves.
The pandemic caused a lot of changes in the world and we were determined to change with it - by finding opportunities in the uncertainty. We expanded our capabilities by adding new departments to flow cohesively with the changing landscape, and we wanted to show off this growth to our clients. We did this by putting our all into a new website, a new logo, new overall look & feel, a manifesto video, all the way down to new brand colors and gestures. (P.S. We even created our own hot sauce!) Our thoughtful business adaptations were visibly seen in our mega rebranding strategy.
Our efforts didn’t go unnoticed. We were ecstatic to see tangible results, such as an increase in website traffic. Not only were we jazzed about this, but our clients were equally excited about our major revamp. They felt our look now truly matched the work and creativity we put into our projects.
MAS took on a genuine strategic business transformation this year and it quite literally shows.
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Entry credits
- Hari Maggs, Marketing Associate, MAS
Entry video
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3
Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy of the Year
Award
Company
TEAM LEWIS
Summary
The last two years have left many communities feeling like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. We thought that this should change.
Something needed to be put in place to help people get back on their feet again. We felt it was time that corporate philanthropy in our sector had a shake-up.
One team. Countless causes. TEAM LEWIS Foundation donates time, money and creative services to help charitable organizations achieve their ambitions.
Every employee has the freedom to nominate and donate to their personal cause. Big or small, it doesn’t matter. When a donation is made, we provide research, marketing and communications to maximize its effectiveness.
Our aim is to help as many communities as possible. We will continue to empower our people, partners and clients to support causes in creative and innovative ways in 2022.
The TEAM LEWIS Causes program is two-fold:
1) It offers every TEAM LEWIS employee 1K to donate to a charitable cause of their choice.
2) It facilitates the opportunity to secure pro-bono TEAM LEWIS marketing support and resources to amplify each non-profit’s efforts.
In the first six months alone, TEAM LEWIS Foundation Causes program exceeded the $1,000,000 donation goal. Since our launch, we have doubled our goal, tallying over $2M in grants and supporting 446 causes worldwide in the first year. In 2022 we have had an additional 200 local cause nominations from our employees.
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Entry credits
- Sam Dean, CEO, TEAM LEWIS Foundation
- Chris Lewis, CEO, TEAM LEWIS
- James Oehlcke, COO, TEAM LEWIS
- Reuben Yuvaraj, Associate Director, TEAM LEWIS
- Charlie Quinn, Senior Operations Executive, TEAM LEWIS
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
Media Bounty
Summary
Media Bounty operates according to a triple bottom line principle of people, planet and profit, so we believe we must deliver on our full potential to support clients and people to build a more sustainable future. Two years ago, we set a bold ambition: to become the UK’s leading independent ethical creative and media agency by 2023 – we’re confident that we're on track to achieving this. We've recently been certified as a BCorp, we’ve grown in terms of staff and clients, we’ve had a few award wins to shout about, so we’re living proof that agencies can create outstanding work that delivers commercial impact and most importantly, with a conscience.
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Entry credits
- Emma Tozer, Co Founder & Operations Director, Media Bounty
- Jake Dubbins, Co Founder & Managing Director, Media Bounty
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Highly Commended
Company
Total Media Group
Summary
As a business, we recognise the importance of building a culture that has a social conscience, and as such we created an Outreach Programme that involves everyone across our agency through engaging with and supporting our local community. In order to do this, we have fostered a truly collaborative partnership with the Young Westminster Foundation who believe all young people in Westminster should grow up healthy, safe & happy with the best opportunities for brighter futures.
We have now worked with them on over 40 projects ranging from more traditional fundraising events, through to gifting media space. However, the work we are most proud of and where our partnership has really come into its own, is the training & work experience programmes we have run for young people in who don't have these opportunities, as well as using our consultancy arm in helping them to address the growing issues around serious youth violence.
We truly work in partnership with YWF, we sit in on relevant internal meetings, input on brainstorming ideas, co-partner events, and support not only them directly, but the many members that they work with, meaning that our work has a genuine impact across Westminster and a partnership they describe themselves as one of their most innovative.
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Entry credits
- Lemeece Page-Shepherd, Business Director, Total Media
- Becca Rawlings, Head of Business Services, Total Media
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4
New! Best Future Proofing Strategy
Nominated
Company
Locaria
Summary
2022 has been one of the most groundbreaking years on record for Locaria – and there are no signs of this relenting soon. The company, which is part of the Stagwell Group, has shown its strongest year-on record with annual growth totaling more than 37%. Pacing from strength to strength, Locaria places its employees, clients and partners at the forefront of its growth strategy, and has tailored its services to meet the changing digital landscape and need for global coverage. As such, our company has happily embraced the expansion of its teams and international growth. This year has seen the inauguration of a new office in Cairo, where talent will join the growing forces of the European and Latin American offices in Barcelona, London, Mexico City and Warsaw. And it doesn’t stop there.
Locaria’s new and ambitious expansion strategy arrived at the opportune moment to respond to the rising challenge of global content fragmentation and increasing demand for transcreated content. Despite already boasting an impressive range of services in translation, localisation, transcreation, copywriting and other specialised digital services, the brand’s market intelligence observed the need to further expand its product offering into the creative sector. Locaria’s mission was to be able to wield a full arsenal of in-house creative production services to be able to support growing brands in achieving their global product expansion goals.
In July 2022, Locaria announced the acquisition of PEP - a global creative asset and production company – operating from the Ukraine, Netherlands and Canada.
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Entry credits
- Hannes Ben, CEO, Locaria
- Lindsay Hong, COO, Locaria
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Nominated
Company
equimedia
Summary
With reporting and attribution especially, the past few years alone have seen shifts from “cookies” to “cookie-less”, “third party” to “first party”, “data accuracy” to “modelling”, “human intervention” to “AI & machine learning”. That’s a lot of change to keep up with, let alone future proof, which is why we have evolved our equiEDGE solution to put clients ahead of the curve.
For over 22 years our focus has always been on 3 core pillars to drive client success: Data, Technology, and most importantly, People. A perfect balance of all three are crucial to thriving in what is more than just a “shifting environment”, but a transformative change in the way data & digital marketing will be done in the future.
We have a history of “future proofing” & being “first to the punch”. We were the first UK doubleclick agency, the first agency using postcode based digital marketing, first use of “home page takeovers”, first agency to launch YouTube lead gen activity, we created a Google shopping solution before Google did, and as Google told us, lead the way with the AI/Machine learning based Performance Max activity.
Our equiEDGE proprietary solution allows us to pull in marketing data, CRM data, and first party data sources to build custom, and fully de-duped, attribution models. equiEDGE becomes the clients single source of truth in understanding true LTV – powering better business & marketing decisions, allowing clients to make sound investments, and scale activity at pace whilst optimising to true LTV.
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Entry credits
- Mark Thelwall, Head of Strategy & Planning, equimedia
- Jess Austin, Planning Account Manager, equimedia
- James Corrigan, Planning Account Director, equimedia
- Paul Wojciak, Planning Analyst, equimedia
- Robert Stalham, Web Analytics Manager, equimedia
- Ross Britton, COO, equimedia
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Award
Company
Yellowstone Forever + Havas Chicago
Summary
Year after year, for the past decade, Yellowstone National Park, the first national park in the U.S., has seen a record increase in attendance. Sounds good, right? Except it’s not.
This increase in visitors negatively impacted Yellowstone in many ways, to the point that its future is in danger. There’s been more car pollution and not enough staff to keep up with the increased demands; the wildlife has been threatened, the habitats disrupted and there’s been more destruction and deterioration of the park’s natural ecosystem than ever before.
So for Yellowstone’s 150th Anniversary in 2022, they wanted to do something that increased donations without increasing attendance. Something that would preserve and future proof the park for generations. All while celebrating its milestone anniversary.
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Entry credits
- Myra Nussbaum , President and Chief Creative Officer, Havas Chicago
- Drew Donatelle, Executive Creative Director, Havas Chicago
- Lewis McVey, Executive Creative Director, Havas Chicago
- Josh Mizrachi, Group Creative Director, Havas Chicago
- Jimmy Dietzen, Group Creative Director, Havas Chicago
- Maicon Silveira, Senior Copywriter, Havas Chicago
- Luiz Faria, Senior Art Director, Havas Chicago
- Dushan Drakalski, Creative Director, Havas Chicago
- Veronica Padilla , Head of Design, Havas Chicago
- Hayley Jungmann, Design Director, Havas Chicago
- Vincent Geraghty, Head of Production , Havas Chicago
- Tara Reid, President , Havas Formula (PR)
- Alison Bruder, VP, Division Manager , Havas Formula (PR)
- Kelly Tick , Senior Account Executive, Havas Formula (PR)
- Michelle Kim, VP, Group Client Lead, Havas Media
- Susan Green, Print Producer, Havas Chicago
- Kevin Heller, Copywriter, Havas Chicago
- Beth Jackson , Junior Art Director , Havas Chicago
- Mary Adam, Junior Copywriter, Havas Chicago
- Michelle Gerstin, Group Strategy Director, Havas Chicago
- Laura Green, Strategy Director, Havas Chicago
- Amy Merchant, Managing Director , Havas Chicago
- Lisa Diekmann, President and CEO , Yellowstone Forever
- Wendie Carr, Chief Marketing Officer, Yellowstone Forever
- Erin Fitzgerald, Director of Online Engagement, Yellowstone Forever
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
Media.Monks
Summary
We’re here to win the decade. That’s our main goal, and it’s backed by our diverse pool of talent, digital production strength, data-driven capabilities, investments in the metaverse and other emerging virtual spaces, and carefully selected mergers and acquisitions—and the industry is taking note. We’re proud to be featured in The Forrester Wave™: Marketing Creative and Content Services Q3 2022 alongside companies such as Accenture, Deloitte and Ogilvy. Ticking the boxes across efficiency, effectiveness and scale, it’s proof that our model for a new era works. “As first timers, we’re thrilled to enter the zeitgeist as a ‘strong performer’ signalling how we’re disrupting the traditional agency hold cos and consulting firms that also populate the list,” says Wesley ter Haar, our Co-Founder and Executive Director at S4Capital.
We’re committed to reaching our goal to win the decade in three key areas: for our clients, for our people and for the market. By employing a future-first approach based on technology, data and digital media insights, we’re able to power through the era of virtualisation—which demands a crystal-clear understanding of emerging consumer behaviours because, unlike previous eras of business transformation, marketers can’t just buy their way into virtualisation. Authentically engaging with virtualisation calls for deft orchestration of transformative new tools, technologies and a breed of talent that can deliver upon the ever-changing needs of consumers at speed—because being able to adapt is the key to success.
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Entry credits
- Sara Cosgrove, Global Director of Awards and Creativity, Media.Monks
Entry video
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5
New! Best Disruption of the Status Quo
Highly Commended
Company
Current Global
Summary
Over 15% of the world’s population has a sight, hearing or cognitive disability preventing them from fully understanding our clients’ communications. That’s over 1 billion people representing $8 trillion of buying power – and a significant slice of the population to exclude if we don’t consider their needs.
An audit of agency websites, social content and media coverage, showed however that no-one was discussing the issue of accessibility within the communications industry. Many agencies talk about DEI, but if your communications aren’t inclusive, it’s a huge blind spot.
Accessible by Design is Current Global’s answer. It serves an important social purpose within the communications industry, and is making a real difference around the world to the inclusivity of the work we do and how people with disabilities experience brands and public discourse.
It’s hard to put a value on transforming the experience of a previously excluded community. But with just a modest spend, through free industry guidelines, a resource heavy website, a 21 Day Challenge, workshops, webinars, conference speaker slots, podcasts and a raft of earned media, we can boldly say that one in five PR practitioners are now engaged in our movement to do all we can to deliver accessible communications.
Current Global is proud to have generated such significant momentum for positive change. If that isn’t a brilliant example of zigging while everyone else is zagging, we don’t know what is!
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Entry credits
- George Coleman, Co-CEO, Current Global
- Camilla Wallace, Account Director, Current Global
- Claire Crutchley, Global Commercial Director, Current Global
- Virginia Devlin, Co-CEO, Current Global
- Rebecca Roussell, Senior Vice President, Current Global
- Sena Pottackal, Junior Associate, Current Global
- Ethan Chiu, Junior Associate, Current Global
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Nominated
Company
Fundamental Media
Summary
At Fundamental Media we have put business innovation through technology at the heart of everything we do. Over the past few years, we’ve realigned strategically, pioneering an award-winning range of proprietary tech solutions that break the media and marketing mould and that are designed exclusively to help our asset management clients and our people navigate tomorrow’s marketing challenges.
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Entry credits
- Ollie Knight, Head of Innovation, Fundamental Media
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Nominated
Company
LogicLogicMagic
Summary
LogicLogicMagic launched officially on May 4th, 2020. Our strategy was to fill a gap in the UK B2B agency market, with a B2C style of creativity, tailored specifically for B2B technology unicorn brands. By May 2022 we had become the UK’s fastest-growing B2B agency with turnover of £2.3m, an international team of sixteen, 100% staff retention, industry gold awards to our name and a founding client partner voted B2B Marketer of the Year. All without a penny of external investment and achieved during a global pandemic.
Back in 2019, research from LinkedIn's B2B Institute revealed that the differences in effective marketing campaign strategies from B2C to B2B were much less pronounced than both sides previously believed. Opening the way for greater creativity in the sector to drive greater effectiveness. Something LogicLogicMagic's founders had long suspected and encouraging us to launch the agency.
LogicLogicMagic is built on a proprietary methodology, rooted in neuroscience. Our formula Literal + Lateral = Memorable, understands how the brain prioritises lateral or unusual elements when processing information and creating memories. In a technology category dominated by hyper-literal product marketing, the scope for this approach is enormous, both in driving brand awareness, consideration and eventually purchase. Marketing LogicLogicMagic using our own creative methodology we have partnered with seven enterprise businesses so far, through our ‘fewer clients, deeper relationships, better outcomes’ philosophy.
By balancing logic and magic we've grown the agency while keeping true to our founding principles: Walk the walk. Share the Load. Protect the magic.
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Entry credits
- Alistair Ross, Creative Partner, LogicLogicMagic
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
Opinium & Ocean Outdoor
Summary
Out-of-home advertising has come a long way since the days of static paper advertising on the sides of A-roads. Although static creatives still have a place in OOH advertising, it is the digitisation of this channel that has made exciting strides over the last decade. As technology continues to advance, Ocean Outdoor have always been at the forefront of innovation, most famously giving the iconic ‘Piccadilly Lights’ a digital makeover in 2017 which now illuminates Piccadilly Circus.
They raised the bar for digital OOH then, and now they are doing it again. Ocean Outdoor have developed DeepScreen; 3D technology allowing digital OOH to appear to float in the air, come out of the screen and move towards the viewer.
Opinium were tasked with researching this media for the very first time by measuring the impact and understanding what the main role of it should be within a brand media plan. The research revealed that DeepScreen could turn DOOH on its head and form a major role, magnetising attention from passers-by and delivering increased brand engagement.
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Entry credits
- Jordan Wood, Associate Director, Opinium
- Steve Bernard, Head of Insight, Ocean Outdoor
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Award
Company
TEAM LEWIS
Summary
The Great Resignation of 2021. People were searching for more than a pay cheque. They craved flexibility. Inspiration. Excitement. Our client base was broadening, and a worldwide war for talent commenced as agencies battled for attention.
Armed with our belief that talent is not tied to experience and qualifications, we took a hammer to archaic hiring traditions, abandoning CVs, cover letters, and job titles that put people in boxes...And asking not, ‘What do you want to do?’ but ‘Who do you want to be?’. Allowing people to apply for a role with us, simply by providing their LinkedIn profile.
And we shouted about it. Harnessing our entire multiverse – earned, paid, organic, word of mouth, employee advocacy – we promoted our new recruitment approach to get this in front of as many people as possible. TEAM LEWIS employees around the world changed their cover photos and job descriptions on LinkedIn to include their ER.
The landing page is the most visited page. Our organic and paid activity reached 6 million people around the globe with over 100k interactions. 19.4k people shared their ER to apply. Since October, we have completed over 800 callbacks, 160 interviews, and made 30 hires. We also now have a bank of 50 creative brains, ready and waiting for the right role. And those numbers are still climbing.
Most importantly, we have proved how a simplified recruitment process, with the person applying at the heart of it can truly open doors to fresh talent.
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Entry credits
- Simon Billington, Executive Creative Director, TEAM LEWIS
- Chris Lewis, CEO, TEAM LEWIS
- Andy Martinus, Head of Innovation, TEAM LEWIS
- Saeid Samimi, Senior Motions Graphic Designer, TEAM LEWIS
- Jason King, Head of Development, TEAM LEWIS
- Lauren Bushell, Global Head of Marketing, TEAM LEWIS
- Christina Ioannou, VP of HR, TEAM LEWIS
- Jen Wu, VP People, APAC & EMEA, TEAM LEWIS
- Sarah Robinson, Chief of Staff, TEAM LEWIS
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5
New! Best Talent Development Initiative
Highly Commended
Company
Initiative
Summary
As the world’s fastest growing media agency*, Initiative has experienced exponential growth in our business over the last several years that has created a need to fill hundreds of new jobs. The Great Resignation compounded our challenge not only in talent recruitment, but also retention as more people reassessed what they valued in a job. One of our key market differentiators is our ability to help brands understand and respond to cultural shifts. We have applied this same expertise to talent recruitment and retention. In the workplace, people often build lifelong friendships that they want to keep when changing jobs. With this insight, we launched “You + A Friend” to invite talent to apply for open roles with a friend. This recruitment campaign generated 362 job applications, resulting in 140 interviews and 10 new hires. Relative to retention, we recognized that people have passions and talents that should be nurtured in the same way that we support their professional development. This insight spurred us to launch a talent retention program called “Marinate Cultureship” that provides 60 people each year with $1,000 grants to pursue any passion or talent that contributes to their personal growth. We achieved a high level of employee retention among the first cohort with 87 percent of Marinate recipients still working at the company after one year. Some recipients actually chose to stay at Initiative because of this program. Marinate has also helped boost morale and foster belonging, while connecting us more deeply to one another. *RECMA
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Entry credits
- Pele Cortizo-Burgess, Chief Culture & Inclusion Officer, Initiative
- Sandra Quick, Associate Director, Culture & Inclusion, Initiative
- Kimberly Miller, Global Chief Experience Officer, Initiative
- Dylan Rose, Social Content and Marketing Designer, Initiative
- Sherrie Wu, Designer, People Experience, Initiative
- Jameelah Stovall, Manager, People Experience, Initiative
- Mary Hill, Director, Influencer Marketing, Initiative
- Silvana Liguori, Associate Director, Digital Partnerships, Initiative
- Mary Abrasley, Senior Director, TA Lead, Initiative
- Stephanie Solomon, Global Chief Talent Officer, Initiative
- Andrew Santosuosso, Manager, Talent Acquisition, HR, Initiative
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Nominated
Company
Stein IAS
Summary
Learn for Your Life
An agency is just people and computers, and every agency has the same computers. So, Stein IAS has put talent development at the heart of its business strategy.
As a full-service B2B agency, Stein IAS feels a constant need to evolve, with maintaining creative and digital brilliance the prime focus.
Everybody knows that technical improvement and personal growth are the essential drivers of business success. The problem is that improvement is never the most urgent matter facing the individual at work.
So, what do you tell people to communicate the absolute urgency of talent development? You tell them: Learn for Your Life!
Learn for Your Life is the Stein IAS professional development brand, and it is accelerating skills, personal growth, recruitment, and ultimately, outstanding business performance.
The brand, and its show stopping creative, underpin a talent development initiative with unstoppable momentum. Kick-started by the mother of all lockdown launch events, Learn for Your Life is driven by a monthly learning competition, an annual team learning league, the online Universal Knowledge Foundation course, a campaign of quarterly all-staff gatherings, and a unique personal development process.
Learn for Your Life has made learning an everyday priority for the majority of Stein IAS staff, increased engagement with professional development many times over, and generated universal understanding of the agency’s offering, purpose, culture and processes.
Recruitment enquiries and applications are up, promotions are up, onboarding speed-to-competence has been transformed, and it’s no coincidence that revenue has grown too.
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Entry credits
- The Stein, IAS, Team
Entry video
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Award
Company
Wunderman Thompson UK
Summary
Against a backdrop of uncertainty in almost every aspect of modern life, retaining and growing the best talent has never been more important. Integrated communications agency, Wunderman Thompson, identified mentoring as a key aspect of their plan to invest in talent and launched Magpie, a mentoring app with a difference.
76% of women believe that mentorship is an important part of professional development. It’s proven to proper careers, with mentees promoted five times more often than those without a mentor. But only 69% have female mentors, compared with 82% of men who have male ones. The balance needed redressing.
Enter Magpie, a mentoring app, but not as you know it.
Magpie connects women to each other within the agency, empowering them and making sure they feel supported, understood and valued. It’s a self-serve platform which allows people who are in search of support to connect with the right person, when the need arises. No lengthy application forms, no long-term commitment, just shiny pieces of advice from lots of different people, with different experiences across the agency.
In the first week after launch, 50% of the agency’s women used Magpie and, since then, 20% continue to use the app each week to connect with a mentor. And they’re already returning the favour, with a 15% increase in female mentor sign ups since launch. It doesn’t stop there, with plans to make Magpie accessible to everyone in the agency, regardless of gender, and eventually to scale across the global agency network.
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Entry credits
- Helen Lee, Head of New Business & Marketing, Wunderman Thompson UK
- Rebecca Pinn, Senior Strategist, Wunderman Thompson UK
- Charli Plant, Creative Lead, Wunderman Thompson UK
- Laura Saraiva, Creative Lead, Wunderman Thompson UK
- Lisa Campana, Head of Design, Wunderman Thompson UK
- Hannah Stephens, Experience Designer, Wunderman Thompson UK
- Myriam Roderick, UX Designer, Wunderman Thompson UK
- Katrina Scott, UX Designer, Wunderman Thompson UK
- Jonothan Hunt, Creative Tech Lead, Wunderman Thompson UK
- Alicia Friend, Data Protection Lead, Wunderman Thompson UK
- Olivia Read, Head of L&D, Wunderman Thompson UK
- Mariana Revesz, Deliver Lead, Wunderman Thompson UK
- John Gardner, Project Manager, Wunderman Thompson UK
- Eliza Miklasevica, Design Lead, Wunderman Thompson UK
- Lisha Gorasiya, Designer, Wunderman Thompson UK
- Evie Nagy , Event & Content Lead, Wunderman Thompson UK
- Sabreena Dean, Event & Content Manager, Wunderman Thompson UK
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Nominated
Company
TEAM LEWIS
Summary
At TEAM LEWIS, we have taken a 360-degree approach when it comes to our talent development. From attracting to retaining and developing talent.
We broke down barriers to entry when we retired the CV and welcomed non-degree holders and career changers to show us their ER. We have gone to new heights with our RISE academy, offering entry-level opportunities to earn and learn across all regions as part of our diversity programme. We evolved our Marketing Masters and Associates programmes, as a way for our executives to develop to managers. It doesn’t stop there. For managers, we also introduced Sun Hub, the opportunity to combine training with our passport scheme in Lisbon for one week.
As a global company with 24 offices around the world, we understand the importance of thinking local, acting global. Our passport scheme and secondments allow employees to visit any TEAM LEWIS office and gain experience of another work culture. This can be short or long haul, for up to a week, a month, or even a permanent relocation.
We value diversity and are committed to making our industry more accessible to a wider talent pool. It’s not about where you’re from, but where you’re going.
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Entry credits
- Yvonne van Bokhoven, EVP EMEA, TEAM LEWIS
- Chris Lewis, CEO, TEAM LEWIS
- Jen Wu, VP People, APAC & EMEA, TEAM LEWIS
- Christina Ioannou, VP HR, TEAM LEWIS
- Sarah Robinson, Chief of Staff, TEAM LEWIS
Entry video
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Highly Commended
Company
Ecrubox
Summary
Pivoting for talent is tough out here in the literal and figurative sticks. You’ve probably not heard of Ecrubox, and our old website is probably still live so we’re doing ourselves no favours (sneaky peek at www.ecrubox.com though). Nevertheless, here is the very true story of how a little agency in Worcester redeployed their whole recruitment and PR budget into a unique form of innovation and created a place brimming with brilliance. It paid off and you’ll know our client successes even if you’re just learning of ours: Jasper Conran London, Brompton, Threshers, The Co-op. We don’t mean to be brash but when you exist in the quiet bits of England, you must grab at opportunities like this one to stake some kudos and seek a pat on the back for your people. Especially when it comes to fostering awesome.
This year, Ecrubox, (founded in 2017), invested their company savings, recruitment advertising and PR budget into innovation for people skills and specialist attraction through deep learning. The results impacted all 34 souls on the payroll. The programme known as “Ecrucademy” unlocked hidden skills in more than a third of the unit and paved the path for almost a quarter of all jobs to uplift, evolve or find specialist new members from 6 different countries.
A talent pivot that paid off.
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Entry credits
- Heather Horton, CEO and Co-Founder, Ecrubox
- Alex Sass, Head of Innovation, Ecrubox
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6
New! Best Sustainability initiative
Nominated
Company
Total Media Group
Summary
The perks of our B Corp accreditation and the associated ESG projects we have carried out in line with this are huge; talent retention, recruitment appeal, cost savings, and attracting like-minded clients to name a few, but for us this isn’t a box ticking exercise. We truly want to be a business that upholds the highest standards of ethics whilst making a substantial difference to the world. And we want to take our people with us on the journey.
Through the dedication of our people and our green team we have we have been able to hit our target of becoming carbon neutral 3 years before our goal of 2025, and 8 years before the Ad Net Zero target, alongside becoming the only independent media agency offering clients completely neutral media, all of which is a great step in reaching our goal of becoming a completely carbon zero business.
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Entry credits
- Becca Rawlings, Head of Business Services, Total Media
- Jess Huntrods, Marketing & New Business Manager, Total Media
- Pedro Martins, Chief Growth Officer, Total Media
- Mike Sell, Chairman, Total Media
- Alix Troy, Head of Reception, Total Media
- Madeleine Ware, Head of Marketing & New Business, Total Media
- Lemeece Page-Shepherd, Business Director, Total Media
- Hannah Moody, Account Director, Total Media
- Sebastiano Zanre, Account Manager, Total Media
- Ghita El Mendri, People & Culture Apprentice, Total Media
- Atihna Siamidou, Digital Account Manager, Total Media
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Award
Company
Forster Communications
Summary
Forster Communications is 100% focused on using communications to build a regenerative economy that works for people and planet. We don’t believe we can advise clients on sustainability and ESG if we are not acting ourselves.
A founding UK B Corp and UN Global Compact signatory, we have won 11 Best-for-the-World Awards in recognition of our approach and impact in partnership with our clients, through our business and across our community. In 2019 we declared a climate emergency and in January 2020 we launched a bold strategy to do something about it - our Climate Positive Plan.
An industry first, we chose to go beyond the emissions we produce to include our whole value chain and wider community. Two years on from launch and we have successfully achieved a major milestone of ensuring that all our suppliers have net-zero commitments.
The ground-breaking plan, first described by some in the industry as “too risky” for including clients, has helped us to become one of the first carbon-neutral PR agencies in UK and encourage 52% of our clients to set carbon emission reduction goals.
This action-led approach has meant in the last year alone we’ve reduced our carbon emissions by 4.1 tonnes, upped our recycling rate and since moving offices pre-pandemic we’ve produced significantly less waste (91%) and lowered our energy use (66%). This is on top of becoming a dairy, meat and paper-free workplace, divesting our pensions and banking from fossil fuels and incentivising employees and clients to travel more sustainably.
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Entry credits
- All of the Forster team for continuing to drive climate action -, -, -
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Nominated
Company
Media Bounty
Summary
The impact of advertising on our planet is staggering. It’s been calculated that advertising adds an extra 28% to the annual carbon footprint of every single person in the UK. As a business that operates according to a triple bottom line principle of people, planet and profit, we recognise our responsibility (and the urgency) of cutting CO2 emissions and strive to bring staff, clients and industry peers along with us on our journey. But this is not just about the climate crisis, it’s also about biodiversity, the extinction crisis, plastics in our oceans and more.
We firmly believe that the best Net Zero strategy is an integrated one, so we’ve woven low carbon initiatives into the fabric of the agency: from creative production to media planning. And in the last 12 months, we've brought together like-minded brands, organisations and partners to increase our impact. We’ve produced campaigns that highlight the important of climate action (at COP26) as well as encouraging the British public to move towards a more sustainable future with plant-based products (Crackd), and ethical pension funds (Make My Money Matter).
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Entry credits
- Emma Tozer, Co Founder & Operations Director, Media Bounty
- Jake Dubbins, Co Founder & Managing Director, Media Bounty
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Nominated
Company
Momentum Worldwide Make it Matter
Summary
We know real progress in reversing climate change happens through actions, not words. Through Make it Matter, our company-wide strategy for ensuring every decision we make has the environment at its heart, we’re fully dedicated to embodying sustainable leadership.
Led by Selina Donald, our Global Sustainability Director, and her team, the challenge was to make it credible and tangible. Change needed to come from the everyday actions of our people on the ground, and from the top.
Once we held intensive assessments throughout every level of the company, the five main areas we needed to shape Make it Matter around became clear. After we set out a target to cut our carbon footprint to 50% by 2030, we then made the leap to be the first global experiential agency to invest in and launch TRACE – a groundbreaking software which allows us to account for our carbon footprint, wastage and materials used.
Our strategy has already begun to resonate. To date, we’ve engaged our global supplier network with our Make it Matter workshop, educated our people on sustainable decision-making through our green skilling programmes, and embedded eco-friendly materials via the circular economy into our creative and production processes.
With so much focus on what brands are saying, it’s easy to forget that it’s what they do that matters. The decisions they make today will be felt for years to come. But with Make it Matter, those choices will give future generations the positive future they deserve.
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Entry credits
- * *, *, *
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Nominated
Company
Nuevo
Summary
Nuevo is an agency like none other!
Bound by the same values and mindset, Nuevo is a group of creatives on a journey to build the world’s most purpose driven creative agency.
Whether it’s partnering with Tomorrow’s Forests or donating profits to climate-changing projects, Nuevo has developed a number of processes that allow it to deliver world class campaigns but most importantly, with the smallest amount of impact to the planet it is striving so hard to protect and sustain.
These processes help reduce the carbon footprint of a typical creative production by up to fifty per cent. The remaining is then offset through credible and transparent partners who share the same values as Nuevo.
Clients such as Canada Goose, Ernst & Young and Ordnance Survey have all benefited from Nuevo’s approach to creative production and the sustainability projects.
Led by CEO, Jax Davey, Nuevo strives continuously to bridge the gap between creativity and sustainability and this blueprint is ever-present in every action taken as an agency.
Entry image
Nuevo Logo Vector.ai
Entry credits
- Jack Davey, CEO, Nuevo
- Louis Nethercott, Operations Manager, Nuevo
Entry video
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Highly Commended
Company
Propellernet
Summary
“Since when does ‘not doing bad’ constitute a meaningful ambition? That’s how Propellernet sees ‘Net Zero’…and don’t get me started on ‘offsetting’ future emissions...”
This is how our MD's vision for the agency to become a pioneer in taking climate action way beyond net zero has been formed, and it's generated the energy that now runs through the business. Propellernet is taking radical climate action, going way beyond a net zero target to become climate positive.
Today, the planet is a key stakeholder in our business. Sam explains that: “instead of aiming to balance our carbon budget at net zero, we are doing the maximum we can to reduce our carbon footprint and the maximum we can to restore nature”.
Over the last 18 months we have already achieved some phenomenal milestones such as:
We have measured our carbon footprint and reduced it by over 20% across scopes 1, 2 and 3 on a science-based net zero pathway
We have committed to invest 5% of profits to tackling climate action
We certified as a B Corp - enshrining our environmental commitments in the company’s articles of association at Companies House
We have planted over 500,000 trees in Madagascar and Mozambique towards planting 1 million trees by the end of 2023
We have offset 15 years of carbon emissions towards our target of offsetting all historic emissions for the 19 years of operations by December 2022
We launched our ‘pension for the planet’
We have become zero waste to
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Entry credits
- Sam Zindel, MD, Propellernet
- Georgie Monaghan, Sales & Marketing Director, Propellernet
Entry video
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4
New! Best Health and Wellbeing Initiative
Highly Commended
Company
ONQOR
Summary
Four-day work week: We operate a four-day work week, which has proven to be a huge success. Our team is happier, contributing to a positive workplace. Productivity has also improved as our team is working smarter, not longer.
Mental Health Initiative: Employees are entitled to two mental health days each year, encouraging a positive and open working environment.
Officevibe: Anonymously tracking employee satisfaction through surveys, providing action points for continued improvement.
Openwage: Giving employees instant access to their monthly wages.
Wellbeing Activities: During COVID, we implemented weekly online PT (personal training) sessions. These were 30-minute sessions twice a week, including Yoga, Cardio and other forms of exercise.
Cost of Living Crisis: To ensure our staff are not experiencing financial hardship through the increasing costs of living, we have given a 10% increase in everyone’s salary.
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Entry credits
- Joe Kaul, Group CEO, ONQOR Group
- Anna Louit, Managing Director, ONQOR
Entry video
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Award
Company
January Digital, The Digital Leadership Company™
Summary
Wellness at work encompasses work life balance, mental health, physical health and connection.
At January Digital we work to embody the core elements of our company mission, one of which is improving the lives of our people. Queue our Well Works Program. Created in 2020, it has served as a vehicle for fostering a company centered on our employee’s whole health, resulting in true employee happiness, retention and wellness.
Our comprehensive program provides mental, emotional, social, physical and financial wellness for every employee at January Digital. From monthly “Wellness Fridays” to an annual wellness stipend and free mental health care services, 100% of our employees receive Well Works benefits the moment they walk in the door. Nearly 40% of employees utilized Well Works services within the first month of it being offered and currently 70% are adopting our mental health resources. Well Works guides our employees in how to prioritize their personal health and wellbeing.
And, our Well Works program isn’t just good for our people, it’s good for our business. Since implementing Well Works, our agency has nearly doubled in size. Well Works has been highlighted in the press eight times in the last year, and our people rate it as one of the top reasons why they love working at January Digital.
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Entry credits
- Jodie Thompson, Senior Marketing Manager, January Digital
- Sarah Engel, President, January Digital
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Nominated
Company
Guerillascope
Summary
Named one of Campaign’s best places to work four years running - reaching the top spot in 2020 - our meritocratic culture empowers every member of staff to be proud of where they work and feel encouraged to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
We believe our team is our most valuable asset, so we like to reward staff for their commitment and hard work. These rewards come in many guises: from annual overseas conferences and access to a country retreat; to a company-wide bonus scheme and regular pay increases.
Such perks, alongside the company’s commitment to creating an open and honest culture, has made our employees want to stay for the long-term, with over 44% having been at the company for over 5 years.
We ensure that every member of our team always feels supported in both their professional and personal lives - be it through flexible working hours, access to comprehensive health cover, or our annual ‘’inspiration fund’’, which goes towards a hobby each employee wishes to develop outside of work. Alongside the full health and dental cover, we reward physical activity with free gym memberships and an extended lunch break for exercise twice a week; our belief is that our working day shouldn’t get in the way of our health.
By joining services such as self-space, which offers therapy to all employees, and having over 70% of our team trained as Mental Health First Aiders, we have created an environment where people can feel accepted and listened to.
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Entry credits
- Lucy McCulley, Content Strategist, Guerillascope
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Nominated
Company
VMLY&R
Summary
N/A
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Entry credits
- Jamie Dierking, Director, Communications, VMLY&R
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2
New! Best Business Development Initiative
Award
Company
StrategiQ
Summary
Where do you start when you need to grow your agency to £3.6miilion? You have multiple service lines across branding, web development, strategy, search, social, content, paid media, CRM and email. Add to this a young, ambitious marketing team, some of whom now work remotely. Firstly, you need everyone aligned on values, process, pricing and delivery.
Now, let’s try and move up the value chain with a more demanding and educated client-base that expects results. Add to the mix CMOs that need your agency's insights, brilliant thinking and execution to hit their ever-increasing targets. Oh, and you’ve onboarded ten new people in six months that are still trying to get up to speed with clients and processes.
You strip everything back and you take the whole company on a journey. You break everything down and centre it on a StrategiQ approach:
Define what you do and how you do it with each channel specialist
Define what you sell and how you sell it.
Create a customer journey to anticipate their needs.
Developed a new sales process and business insights document.
Build a strategy channel plan that centralises all estimates for each service line and creates a scope of work linked to client strategies that then converts into a seamless delivery plan.
Build an agency operating system so the client’s strategy is always visible
What you end up with is one way to sell, estimate and deliver unmatched clarity for the client and delivery team, and achieve record growth.
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Entry credits
- Gellen Watt, NED, Strategiq
- Adam Thomas, Director, Salonspy
- Will Anderson, CMO, featurespace
Entry video
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Highly Commended
Company
Opinium
Summary
While most sectors during the pandemic were taking a nosedive, the Gaming sector was experiencing unprecedented growth. Opinium wanted to capitalise on that and attract new business from this sector.
Opinium’s approach was to design an evolving and highly responsive thought leadership programme that would seek to contribute to hot topics in the Gaming world using primary, complimentary research.
Using this research, we would then reach out to the media, our roster of existing clients and leads to promote it in order to position ourselves as a Gaming expert and attract new business.
Using Opinium’s 40,000-strong in-house panel, Opinium designed and carried out research that was to be the basis of 6 new thought leadership reports from 2020 to 2022.
We used all six reports to engage with the media and sell in exclusives; targeted clients and leads in the Gaming space to offer complimentary research briefings for their teams; promoted the research through our social media channels and responded to calls for contribution for research conferences and events.
Opinium’s Gaming business strategy has seen brilliant success, leading to winning new business with clients such as Xbox, Blast, Stratis and the EA; as well as attracting briefs from Play'n GO, Parimatch, Bungie and SEGA.
Opinium were also invited to close the MRS Sports & Gaming 2022 conference to present the Mental Health & Disability in Gaming research report; and received coverage in publications such as Forbes and the Gaming Bible.
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Entry credits
- Ande Milinyte, Senior Research Manager & Gaming Team Lead, Opinium
- Cameron Hatter, Research Executive & UK Gaming Research Expert, Opinium
- Grace Miller, Senior Research Analyst and US Gaming Research Expert , Opinium
- Giulia Prati, Vice President of Research US, Opinium
- Chris Carey, Head of Music, Media and Entertainment, Opinium
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4
New! Best Agency/Client Relationship
Highly Commended
Company
DHL x The Maverick Group
Summary
The Maverick Group (TMG) started working with DHL in 2002. From an initial sales campaign, the relationship between the fledgling, challenger London agency and international mega-brand, has spanned two unbroken decades and delivered ground-breaking creative: the world’s largest staff-engagement campaign across 200 countries, a global digital content platform reaching SMEs from Belarus to Beijing, supporting the Rolling Stones ‘Exhibitionism’ worldwide tour, even delivering a white rhino back to its home in Africa.
The relationship has grown stronger year by year as the dynamics of the logistics industry and changing times have delivered fresh challenges. From financial crises to global pandemics to the pivot towards ESG, Maverick have continued to deliver original, award-winning ideas and campaigns.
Along the way, Maverick and DHL have created a bond of trust. A unique client/agency relationship founded on good faith, mutual respect and openness enables the agency to interrogate projects and deliver unexpected and surprising solutions.
Having developed an in-depth knowledge of the logistics industry, refined through more than 600 projects for 5 global DPDHL divisions across two decades, Maverick is able to ‘hit the ground running’ on new briefs in a way that others would be tested to match. Yet they are still totally dedicated to delivering original, step-change ideas that continue to amaze, delight and even inspire every client in, and customer of, the DPDHL corporation.
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Entry credits
- Owen Rees, CEO, The Maverick Group
- Carron Edmonds, Chairwoman, The Maverick Group
- David Cavilla, Group Account Director, The Maverick Group
- Kate Doyle, Project Lead, The Maverick Group
- Faruk Akosman, Global Head of Programs & Marketing Director, DHL
- Lee Nelson, VP, Marketing & Communications, DHL eCommerce
- Ken Allen, CEO, DHL eCommerce
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Nominated
Company
Hearts & Science
Summary
The Hearts and GoCompare story started in late 2018 with a typical client challenge: battle it out in linear TV and boost share of voice. But as the teams settled into their new relationship, complete with a plan and set of expectations, the pandemic was just around the corner.
Soon enough, the rules of everyday working had changed, as had media consumption habits and consumer spending. Furthermore, TV prices were inflating and competitors in the price comparison market were outspending on their rival by a factor of five.
Yet with the right foundations already in place, the adversity proved a great test for just how strong and fruitful the relationship could be.
Indeed, based on real trust and investment in people and ideas, the teams were able to take enough risk to really flex their creative and strategic muscles, coming closer together in the process and ultimately future proofing GoCompare’s business.
Getting there wasn’t always easy. Hearts even restructured its own teams to adapt to the challenges and fully support the client. Yet it paid off, and GoCompare was able to diversify its AV mix, reduce reliance on linear TV, and run circles around competitors by creatively integrating its brand assets into the cultural fabric of British TV entertainment.
Since then, a continuous injection of smart, creative thinking has secured a seven-point awareness lead against its nearest rival for GoCompare, while the client has described the relationship “unflinching” in its support, and the Hearts’ team as a “true partner”.
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Entry credits
- Michele Cameron, Client Partner, Hearts & Science
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Award
Company
London Irish and UnitedUs
Summary
Initially approached to help London Irish rugby club mark a historic stadium move, our relationship with and the results of our ongoing partnership are continuing to empower everyone involved. From creativity and innovation that is raising the bar for the sport, to commercial success that’s empowering the club's upward trajectory, to a sense of belonging that’s uniting everyone who encounters the Exile Nation, UnitedUs and London Irish are an unstoppable force, and we’re not the only ones who think so:
“UnitedUs has transformed this club, because we have them in our corner we've become the ones to watch, and not just with the brand. Everything from our attendance to our sales and campaigns not to mention our new appetite for innovation are all underpinned by our efforts together.” - Katy Murphy, Head of Marketing, London Irish
"UnitedUs have really impressed us with their work to date and them being on board now as an official partner is a natural progression and shows the value we place on developing our relationships with key stakeholders within the business.” – Mark Bensted, CEO, London Irish Rugby Club
“I wanted to say thank you. The work you’ve done, the brand, the marketing has changed our club and set a new bar of ambition. Now the new generation talk about the club like we’re the cool kids, and as an old boy - it’s a thrill I can tell you.” - London Irish fan
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Entry credits
- Luke Taylor, Creative Partner, UnitedUs
- Carl Rylatt, Senior Designer, UnitedUs
- Jemma Kendall, Brand Designer, UnitedUs
- Sorrel Rivers, Brand Designer, UnitedUs
- Jason Best, Print Designer, UnitedUs
- Katy Murphy, Head of Marketing, London Irish
- Harry Chesterman, Marketing Manager, London Irish
- Bill Pulling, Senior Communications Manager, London Irish
- Stephanie Paizee, Project Manager, UnitedUs
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Highly Commended
Company
VMLY&R
Summary
N/A
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Entry credits
- Jamie Dierking, Director, Communications, VMLY&R
Entry video
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4
New! Best M&A initiative
Nominated
Company
Locaria
Summary
2022 has been one of the most groundbreaking years on record for Locaria – and there are no signs of this relenting soon. The company, which is part of the Stagwell Group, has shown its strongest year-on record with annual growth totaling more than 37%. Pacing from strength to strength, Locaria places its employees, clients and partners at the forefront of its growth strategy, and has tailored its services to meet the changing digital landscape and need for global coverage. As such, our company has happily embraced the expansion of its teams and international growth. This year has seen the inauguration of a new office in Cairo, where talent will join the growing forces of the European and Latin American offices in Barcelona, London, Mexico City and Warsaw. And it doesn’t stop there.
Locaria’s new and ambitious expansion strategy arrived at the opportune moment to respond to the rising challenge of global content fragmentation and increasing demand for transcreated content. Despite already boasting an impressive range of services in translation, localisation, transcreation, copywriting and other specialised digital services, the brand’s market intelligence observed the need to further expand its product offering into the creative sector. Locaria’s mission was to be able to wield a full arsenal of in-house creative production services to be able to support growing brands in achieving their global product expansion goals.
In July 2022, Locaria announced the acquisition of PEP - a global creative asset and production company – operating from the Ukraine, Netherlands and Canada.
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Entry credits
- Hannes Ben, CEO, Locaria
- Lindsay Hong, COO, Locaria
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Award
Company
The Marketing Practice
Summary
Over the past 12 months, we’ve made four acquisitions, bringing the best B2B specialists together under one bold new brand.
We have developed an agile operating model that means we can bring these specialists together in multi-skilled teams with an intense focus on the customer and responsibility for outcomes, not just outputs; supporting our clients from brand to demand. We call it the growth engine.
Our vision is to change the fragmented B2B marketing services industry to make it work better for clients and agency teams.
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Entry credits
- n/a n/a, n/a, n/a
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Nominated
Company
Fortress Brand
Summary
Fortress Brand, a leading full-service e-commerce marketplace agency based in New York City, triumphed in its M&A efforts in 2021 and 2022. In less than two years, Fortress’s vision of transforming into a global omnichannel accelerator and expanding its suite of in-house services came to life with the strategic acquisitions of three key partners — School House, a leading creative and branding powerhouse, Finc3, one of the top international digital marketing agencies in Europe, and Taylor & Pond, acclaimed digital marketing and demand generation agency for beauty and wellness brands.
Through the partnership with School House, the agency further deepened its beauty, health, and wellness expertise, and added cut-through creative services like strategy and creative development, creative production, architectural design, and industrial design, allowing both entities to provide best-in-class work that builds brands and drives business value in a meaningful way.
With the acquisition of Finc3, whose capabilities include digital marketplace marketing, CRM, data analytics, and B2B performance marketing, Fortress’s existing and future clients gained regional access to markets including the EU, the UK, and Japan, and the capabilities to support their businesses, accelerate geographic expansion, and create market demand.
The addition of Taylor & Pond enhanced Fortress’s client relationships by being able to offer additional creative and digital demand generation capabilities through an integrated growth platform.
Now, with a global team of 250+ spanning three time zones, Fortress Brand has the ability to support growing brands in the consumer product space at any stage of their life cycle.
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Entry credits
- Solomon Hedaya, VP of Corporate Development, Fortress Brand
- Gabrielle Maksian, Director of Marketing, Fortress Brand
- Alex Beer, Co-founder & Co-CEO, Fortress Brand
- Matt Beer, Co-founder & Co-CEO, Fortress Brand
- Grace Ansley, VP of Growth, Fortress Brand
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Highly Commended
Company
Kairos Group
Summary
Founded in 2015 by Mike Craddock and Chris Parnell, Kairos Group (Kairos) has the ambition to become the first gaming media unicorn. Composed of multiple entities across agency services, talent management, owned media, esports, software and technology, Kairos Group harnesses the creator economy and its proprietary IP to connect global brands and social platforms with gamers, including Facebook, Revolut, Cetaphil, Porsche, Activision, Pizza Hut and Snapchat.
We aren’t a corporate business and we’re doing things a bit differently to a SPAC or traditional holding groups. We have a unique self-funded founder narrative that we are proud of and the majority of our c-suite and senior leadership team have been involved in the gaming industry for many years, building authentic relationships in the space with brands, creators and consumers.
The industry is evolving at a rapid pace and there is a substantial amount of consolidation taking place from some of the larger, more institutional media and gaming groups who want to muscle in on our turf. For us to stay at the front of the pack, we need to bring the best partners onboard and offer like-minded leaders and founders in our space the opportunity to join the Kairos rocket ship.
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Entry credits
- Luke Bristow, Chief Corporate Officer, Kairos Group
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5
New! Best Global Development Strategy
Nominated
Company
Hybrid
Summary
Hybrid is an end-to-end innovative digital, media buying and creative agency supporting Higher Education and Technology partners. We are growing globally and are proud to have opened in the US this year. Our teams in Sydney, Kuala Lumpur, Philadelphia, and our Bristol HQ successfully support partners including UCAS, Australia National University, UEA, Cisco and Verizon. We provide big player capabilities, with the dedication and attention of a boutique agency.
HE is a local and global sector. Each university talks to and attracts students from down the road, as well as from across continents. Once we were established in the UK, we began to plan how we could better connect with students around the world: by becoming global ourselves.
Connecting with the World’s Students
Hybrid is the leading authority on youth audiences and global student motivations. We use data to forecast, model, predict and understand demand of HE audiences..
Each team offers a full service, capable of growing and innovating independently, whilst sharing knowledge and ideas across sites. This puts us close to the people we work with and keeps our business running sustainably — fewer air miles, less fuel, lower emissions.
Providing high levels of personalisation in our services and customer care is essential during this period of rapid growth, and is a key pillar of our global strategy. We’re also investing time in internal employee engagement measures to ensure that all our sites are working towards the same goal. This means a happier workforce and happier business partners.
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Entry credits
- Gemma Tordoff, Bid Writer, Hybrid
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Highly Commended
Company
NP Digital
Summary
NP Digital (NPD) was co-founded in 2017 by Neil Patel—a New York Times Best Selling author, one of the top 10 marketers (Forbes), and a top influencer on the web (The Wall Street Journal). While Patel has provided consulting and thought leadership to the business and marketing communities for more than two decades, NPD is the agency that brings his passion, innovation, and insights to life by providing professional services for brands across the globe. During the last 12 months we have hired 250 new team members, 160 joining in the first half of 2022 now totaling +700. We saw 169% revenue growth in 2021, and our 2022 forecast has us topping $100 million USD by the end of the year (50% increase from 2021).
NPD’s mission is to build the best performance marketing agency by giving back to the marketing community. We do this by providing free content and thought leadership coupled with free technology. Our goal is to inspire, educate, and help marketers worldwide do performance marketing better. By offering free solutions we have amassed a dedicated following and userbase that has helped build our brand while building trust within the marketing community. The users we have been supporting for years are now in positions of power and making agency selection decisions. These loyal decision makers have helped propel our business into the global market.
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Entry credits
- Michael Gullaksen, CEO, NP Digital
- Paul Darling, CFO, NP Digital
- Brittany Richter, COO, NP Digital
- Michelle Scully, VP, Human Resources, NP Digital
- Brooke Hess, VP, Paid Media, NP Digital
- David Shapiro, SVP, Earned Media, NP Digital
- Chris Moreno, SVP, Paid Media, NP Digital
- Nikki Lam, Sr. Director, Earned Media, NP Digital
- Brandon Smith, Managing Director, UK, NP Digital
- Ronnie Malewski, Managing Director, Canada, NP Digital
- Dan Kalinski, Managing Director, Australia, NP Digital
- Caio Beleza, VP, International Growth, NP Digital
- Rafael Mayrink, CEO, Brazil, NP Digital
- Traci Rice, VP, Operations, NP Digital
- Prady Kumaar, CEO, India, NP Digital
- Collin Cornwell, VP, Growth Marketing, NP Digital
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
Locaria
Summary
2022 has been one of the most groundbreaking years on record for Locaria – and there are no signs of this relenting soon. The company, which is part of the Stagwell Group, has shown its strongest year-on record with annual growth totaling more than 37%. Pacing from strength to strength, Locaria places its employees, clients and partners at the forefront of its growth strategy, and has tailored its services to meet the changing digital landscape and need for global coverage. As such, our company has happily embraced the expansion of its teams and international growth. This year has seen the inauguration of a new office in Cairo, where talent will join the growing forces of the European and Latin American offices in Barcelona, London, Mexico City and Warsaw. And it doesn’t stop there.
Locaria’s new and ambitious expansion strategy arrived at the opportune moment to respond to the rising challenge of global content fragmentation and increasing demand for transcreated content. Despite already boasting an impressive range of services in translation, localisation, transcreation, copywriting and other specialised digital services, the brand’s market intelligence observed the need to further expand its product offering into the creative sector. Locaria’s mission was to be able to wield a full arsenal of in-house creative production services to be able to support growing brands in achieving their global product expansion goals.
In July 2022, Locaria announced the acquisition of PEP - a global creative asset and production company – operating from the Ukraine, Netherlands and Canada.
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Entry credits
- Hannes Ben, CEO, Locaria
- Lindsay Hong, COO, Locaria
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Nominated
Company
Webgains
Summary
Lounge Underwear is on a mission to empower women worldwide. Lounge aims to redefine beauty standards and pave the way for intimates that are both comfortable and sexy. With this mission in mind, Lounge launched their affiliate programme with Webgains in February 2021 across the UK and US markets.
Adhering to strict brand guidelines, the programme was opened exclusively to target the student demographic. Webgains increased Lounge’s publisher mix in-line with their goals and objectives; Within three weeks, Webgains launched Lounge’s programmes with emphasis on closed group and content affiliates, such as Blue Light Card, Easyfundraising, TOTUM and Skimlinks.
The initial launch of Lounge UK and US resulted in a 53% uplift in revenue against the forecast, achieving an ROI of £13.45 and +35% against the projection. Due to the successful launch of the UK and US programmes, Lounge set their sights on the German market.
Webgains enlisted the high-level support of our team in Nuremberg, utilising their expert local knowledge. To elevate the programme further, Lounge agreed to onboard shopping partners such as Lyst and Stylight. The German programme saw an uplift of +589%. Webgains also achieved a new customer rate of 54% since launch, highlighting the value in our acquisition strategy.
It is rare to see a UK based brand take the German market by storm, but to do this within the affiliate channel whilst not working with any voucher or cashback sites is highly commendable.
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Entry credits
- Alona Malinovska, Managing Director UK, Webgains
- Ben Eversden, Account Director, Webgains
- Jeanne Lagenfeld, Account Manager, Webgains FR
- Ashleigh Waters, Account Manager, Webgains
- Saskia Paulus , Director Agencies, Webgains GmbH
- Jack Davies, Commercial Director, Webgains
- Hannah Lewis , Head of PPC and Affiliates, Lounge Underwear
- Kiran Bains, Chief Marketing Officer, Lounge Underwear
- Marsela Qazimi, Junior PPC Executive, Lounge Underwear
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Award
Company
Manifest
Summary
Manifest’s ambition to be the world’s first global unified agency went into overdrive in 2021 as we accelerated our efforts to build one global team designed to thrive in a post-pandemic world. Through our unique proposition that combined the agility of a small-mid size agency with a global footprint and multi-market knowledge, we were able to buck the trend of agency consolidation and to drive a record year of growth across the entire Manifest Group.
Global agency fees grew by 30% through a combination of strategic projects including launching our first studio in the South Hemisphere in Melbourne, Australia which gave us a 24/7 creative operation. We expanded our creative services to drive incumbent growth as well as attract over 30 new clients including some of the world’s biggest brands. Our global team doubled, as we attracted new skillsets and best-in-class talent, and we rolled out industry leading initiatives in DE&I and people development. We introduced triple-bottom-line reporting measuring our growth and success by the positive impact our campaigns and business has on our people, the planet, and lastly, our profit. Our commitment to putting people and plant first saw us earn 22 trade awards for our purpose-led campaigns and agency innovations, whilst our global profit margins tripled.
Perhaps most importantly, we did all of the above through the pursuit of a single agency mission: to build brands that change the world.
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Entry credits
- Alex Myers, Global CEO and Founder, Manifest
Entry video
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6
New! Best New Product or Service Development
Nominated
Company
SCOOP & SPOON
Summary
We are a company that provides a wide and diverse range of marketing software and services. These cover every aspect of our customer’s marketing needs, and include everything from marketing consulting to social media, software development, editorial and UX design. For every project we do, we bring together a variety of these competencies – or modules – to address the challenges and goals of our client. These could include a range of different competencies, solutions, products, AI recommender engines, dynamic microservices, complex APIs, strategy consulting, or design. It might be one of these things, or all of these things. Our portfolio of services is so diverse and disparate that, when the pandemic hit and many of our customers scaled back their requirements, we realized that in order to thrive we needed to create a simple way to make it easier for our customers to understand what we offer.
So, rather than simply offering a wide array of services, we bundled all of them into a coherent, easy-to-understand, fully configurable and customizable product that we called the SCOOP River™ Marketing Platform. Delivering a modular approach to configuring our technologies, services and methodologies, it is completely flexible, and this means that it can be integrated seamlessly into the clients’ existing process ecosystem, and configured to match their brand and strategy. In addition, should the client’s needs or goals change, then so too can the platform.
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Entry credits
- Anna Habermann, Marketing Director, SCOOP & SPOON
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Award
Canvas8 Membership Platform: delivering an always-on understanding of people, behaviour and culture.
Company
Canvas8
Summary
Canvas8’s new platform unlocks the value of human understanding at the click of a button!
Evolving beyond an insight tool to include a digital suite of proprietary tools and services, Canvas8 empowers users to make confident, consumer driven decisions. As part of a strategy to deliver on their core mission to ground businesses in human understanding, Canvas8 invested £1million in the redevelopment to go from insight tool to strategic partner - informing decisions from creative briefs to the boardroom!
The platform offers:
Library 2.0: An industry leading online Library of insight on consumer behaviour including:
33k+ articles
15 sectors, 9 markets, 6 generations
10,000+ curated data points from global sources
100+ scientific journals monitored and synthesised
Advanced search using (NLP) Deep Scan technology
Live: Engaging briefings from behavioural analysts as they present their latest research every month, enabling members to interact live and embed the learnings in their work.
Access: An on-demand directory connecting members to 500+ thought leaders, industry insiders, and macro and sector experts. A trusted place to find authoritative perspectives and the sharpest minds on the planet.
Toolkit: Previously the domain of separate project consultancy, the new platform provides access to fast and affordable mini-projects – responding to everyday challenges and research needs with inspirational outputs.
The new platform has helped achieve: a 62.5% increase in annual revenue, double the amount of annual new customer accounts, improved retention to 96%.
“My go-to research platform. I rate them very, very highly. Basically, my secret weapon", Ogilvy & Mather
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Entry credits
- Meera Pathak, Head of Product, Canvas8
- Austin Collins, CTO, Canvas8
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Highly Commended
Company
MOI GLOBAL
Summary
We’re agents of change in B2B.
At MOI, our billable hours help make us a catalyst for change. But we wanted to find a way to give our clients even more value, outside the constraints of billable hours.
We decided it was time to raise the stakes—and get creative with data.
Our answer: the Intel Unit, an intelligent, strategic hub built to empower our clients with insights about their market, competitors, and audience that they can’t get from traditional sources—creating even bigger business outcomes.
The Intel Unit draws on expert research and uses a collection of technology platforms new to the agency to collect and analyze the right data, then deliver its findings to our Strategy team. They in turn can then give our clients the best recommendations for future campaigns and programs.
The highly effective partnership between our Intel Unit and Strategy team gives us a platform to launch head-turning offerings to new market segments and heighten the experience for our clients. This is only accelerating MOI’s growth into the world’s largest independent B2B agency.
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Entry credits
- STUART HARRISON, VP STRATEGY, EMEA, MOI GLOBAL
- CALLUM MISKELL, DIGITAL CAMPAIGN MANAGER, MOI GLOBAL
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Nominated
Company
INFUSEmedia
Summary
The power of a proactive and engaged client success team is often underestimated, at INFUSEmedia we decided to diverge away from this narrative and instead turned our client success team into a jewel that sustained and increased revenue.
Our objective for the last 18 months has been to solidify our client success offering given our rapid expansion in the EMEA and APAC regions. To give context, we have seen an average growth rate of over 140% which resulted in us being placed 67th in Inc. magazine’s third annual Inc. 5000 Regionals Southeast list 2022 and also ranking for INC magazine for the years 2019 and 2021
After initiating a clearly defined strategy our Client Success team has become a well-oiled machine geared and targeted at service excellence.
The results have been overwhelming from a revenue standpoint, including improvements in the client journey and user experience.
The team ranks 5/5 on CSAT and 9.7/10 on NPS scores.
Average client response time is 1 hour 52 minutes, with 48% of responses sent within 15 minutes of receipt.
Each account is assigned 2 success experts to ensure consistency and service continuity.
Renewals translate to a sustainable revenue source and a higher Client Lifetime Value. Renewals, which are initiated by the Client Success team, have increased by 65% YOY.
As a company, we stand humbled by the dedication our client support team has shown to deliver these results.
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Entry credits
- Larysa Zakirova, Vice President Business Operations, INFUSEmedia
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Nominated
Company
StackAdapt
Summary
Reflect Digital’s client, Opayo, was looking to increase overall conversions in channels that differed from their typical paid search campaigns, without compromising on cost. Working with StackAdapt as a programmatic partner, Reflect Digital was able to drive quality site traffic and keep costs low as they beat their performance benchmarks by 49% with an overall CPA of ₤144.63
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Entry credits
- Raina Roberts, Sales Manager, StackAdapt
- Khaled Alfangary, Senior Account Manager, StackAdapt
- Rob Bridgens, Head of Paid Media, StackAdapt
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
Eastside Co
Summary
With over 10 years as a premier Shopify Plus agency, we've partnered with many brands at the beginning of their journey, helping burgeoning startups like Wild Deodorant grow into market leaders. However, not all disruptive and fledgling brands have the financial backing to enable them to invest the kind of time or money needed for a full ecommerce website build that can take months to create and launch.
This is why we developed the Accelerator Programme. We want to enable the Gymsharks of the future to fulfil their potential through a superb, quick to market, online ecommerce presence, backed up by expert marketing and strategic support - so that new and ambitious brands are able to scale quickly in a cost-effective way.
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Entry credits
- Tobi Emmanuel, Front End Technical Manager, Eastside Co
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5
Leadership Team of the Year
Highly Commended
Company
UNLIMITED
Summary
Executive Leadership Team is made up of eight leaders, who together have over 100+ years tenure with UNLIMITED, and many more decades’ industry experience. They’ve led our business into the UK’s leading conversion agency and together we have best-in-class for performance, best-in-class, upper quartile client satisfaction, have a happy and engaged workforce. And, our superpower is our deeper human understanding.
We are UNLIMITED.
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Entry credits
- Savanna-Lee Stevens, Designer , UNLIMITED
- Faye Hawkins, CRO, UNLIMITED
- Victoria Allen, EA, UNLIMITED
- Tim Bonnet , President , UNLIMITED
- Tim Hassett, Group CEO, UNLIMITED
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
StrategiQ
Summary
The StrategiQ Leadership Team have come together and developed more than any team I have ever worked with in my career. James (CTO), Sarah (CPO), Kirsty (Financial Director), Ash (Creative Director), Charlie (Marketing and Performance Director), Tyler (Operations Director), Tom (Development Director), Emma (Client Director) have all completely transformed themselves personally and their departments in the last 12 months.
What is most impressive is the pace that they have scaled the business in that period - from 34 to 48 people and a more than 50% Y-O-Y revenue growth. The way they have coped with change management, situational leadership, innovation and the ever-increasing demands of clients and people is nothing short of inspirational. But that’s not even the highlight, in the last 12 months they have maintained an 85% client net promoter score and an 82% team happiness score. (This is recorded and measured in our operating system which was innovated, designed and implemented by the team itself)
Each month they hold each other to account, set challenging goals and run through walls for each other. I have watched them manage their teams' personal development, take control of recruitment within those teams, have the tough conversations, show empathy at the right times and live and breathe our values every day.
At times I’ve questioned if I’ve pushed them too hard, but our transparent communication around numbers, people, vision and all the good/bad stuff over the years has only made them tougher, more committed and engaged as a unit.
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Entry credits
- Andy Smith, CEO, StrategiQ
Entry video
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Award
Company
Somo
Summary
Somo, part of the CI&T (NYSE: CINT) family, is a leading global digital product agency, delivering digital ambitions at pace and scale. We work with some of the world’s largest and most influential brands including Audi of America, Coca-Cola, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Vanguard, E.ON and Virgin Media.
But we wouldn’t get where we are without our visionary leaders. Somo is headed up by a multi-talented team of executives based in our UK, US and Colombia offices. Their objectives around acquisition, growth and culture were ambitious, but with significant revenue and client base growth, huge rise in employee numbers, industry awards and the acquisition by a global digital powerhouse CI&T, this has been our most successful period yet!
In January 2022, we’ve been acquired by CI&T—a milestone achievement, representing a decade-long goal for the business. But despite all difficulties surrounding a typical acquisition process, our leaders met this challenge head-on, removing potential friction and sparking excitement, while ensuring that everything our clients—and our people—love about Somo remains intact.
The team spent the last decade creating a unique valued-led culture that empowers people to create something great, innovate, grow, and enjoy the ride. And, despite the rapid growth, things haven’t changed. In a recent anonymous staff survey, one of the Somo’ers said: “Still feels like a family environment (all look out for each other) even though we have grown a lot in size”.
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Entry credits
- Nick Hynes, President, Director & Co-founder, Somo
- Carl Uminski, CEO & Co-founder, Somo
- Nick Haywood, COO, Americas, Somo
- Rebecca Crook, Chief Growth Officer, Somo
- Ross Sleight, Chief Strategy Officer, Somo
- Mike Astle, Chief Technology Officer, Somo
- Jason Hooper, Chief Client Officer, Somo
- Adam Cole, Finance Director, Somo
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
SHARE Creative
Summary
It’s been a proud year for our leadership team.
The 8 of us, Alex, Caroline, Charles, Ian, Jasmin, Mike, Nathan and Robyn, believe our jobs are pretty simple - lead and empower SHARE’s business and team growth.
From a work perspective, we’ve been on hand to onboard 8 new clients and grow our existing partners by 160%.
But, none of it’s possible without every incredible person at SHARE. As much as this is an award for a “Leadership Team”, we see this as our chance to simply shine a light on their highlights, talents, and some of the tools we use to help.
The team has grown from 21 to 47 in just 12 months, and we’ve guided 16 internal promotions.
We keep our communication clear and transparent, discussing agency numbers and positions without a filter.
We invite discussion and feedback on key topics, such as flexible working, and follow and action staff feedback.
We’ve doubled down on our ‘3P’s’ review program to guide goal hitting and contribution. We’ve launched SHARE Cares, our initiative to ensure and foster equality, diversity, inclusion and more.
We’ve rolled out a holacratic structure, giving more responsibility to teams and individuals, to take us to new and exciting places.
All of this has led to an attrition rate of just 5%, a Staff NPS score of 67, and Campaign named us as one the industries Top 100 Places to work.
It’s been great to be a part of.
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Entry credits
- Alex Hill, Executive Creative Director & Co-Founder, SHARE Creative
- Caroline Challingsworth, Operations Director, SHARE Creative
- Charles Ruyant, Paid Director, SHARE Creative
- Ian Cassidy, CEO & Founder, SHARE Creative
- Jasmin Fischer, Insights Director, SHARE Creative
- Mike Tapp, Data Director, SHARE Creative
- Nathan Townsend, Managing Director , SHARE Creative
- Robyn Saunders, Creative Director, SHARE Creative
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Nominated
Company
Sunshine
Summary
We are Sunshine, a 24/7 social media marketing and content production company who are on a mission to be the go-to social media agency in Scotland, both for our clients and our team.
Like the rest of the world, we’ve faced some challenges over the last few years, but we weathered the storm and have come out the other side stronger and more ambitious than ever! A lot of this is down to our incredible leadership team who, over the last 12 months especially, have worked tirelessly to make Sunshine a place we are all proud of, with a focus on helping us achieve our goals while feeling valued and celebrated for our uniqueness.
We might be a small team, but we go big when it comes to our working culture! From implementing meaningful benefits, to starting a wellness programme, running events and allowing the team to shine with opportunities for growth and development – not to mention several award nominations and one big win - it’s been a great year to be part of Team Sunshine and that's why we think our leadership team deserves to win this award.
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Entry credits
- Emma Fraser, Senior Copywriter, Sunshine
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5
CEO of the Year
Nominated
Company
Critical Mass
Summary
Ask a CMer,
and they’ll tell you—there’s no one we’d rather have at the helm. With Chris as
our leader, Critical Mass is a great place to work, and an industry leader in
its own right.
- Growth everywhere: With Chris at the helm, our revenue, global
footprint, and headcount are growing fast
- Client-service mindset: Loads of organic growth, a 7-year average
client tenure, and a client list like no other, Chris understands the deep
value of good partnership.
- Recognition far and wide: Chris and CM have been recognized by our
industry for excellence in all its forms.
- Expanding services: The world has changed, but Chris is making sure
CM delivers services that matter for today and tomorrow—innovative service
that’s making an impact.
- DE&I: Chris has made DE&I a priority and expects the
deepest commitment from every single person at CM. High expectations are
mirrored by high accountability, as well as meaningful programs and
initiatives.
- The people have spoken: When we asked for testimonials for Chris,
they poured in. If it weren't for word counts, we'd send volumes!
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Entry credits
- Chris Gokiert, CEO, Critical Mass
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Highly Commended
Company
We Are Family London
Summary
In May 2016, armed with a pipe dream but no finance or seed funding, Poppy founded We Are Family London from her kitchen table. Her vision was an agency with people and a healthy working culture at the heart of it, where employees could thrive whilst delivering outstanding creative events.
In six years she has built the agency to a permanent team of 33 thinkers and doers by relying on clients returning again and again, based on their experience of partnering with the agency. It has built a stellar client list, and in 2022 has added six new global clients to its roster.
WAF, known to friends in the industry, delivers on average 125+ events a year and attracts the very best talent. The team is multi-cultural and consists of 78% UK hires v 22% global hires, with a 70% female to 30% male ratio. Together, the team has 122 individual skill sets from across the events world. Its diverse and inclusive culture encourages employees to have a voice across all company matters and a place to grow whilst driving the creative excellence it is known for.
The agency’s strong growth is testament to the visionary leadership, dedication, and creativity Poppy has put into practice since its inception, and her focus on carving out a reputation of excellence within the industry.
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Entry credits
- Poppy Reeve-Tucker, Executive Creative Director, We Are Family London Ltd
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Nominated
Company
VMLY&R
Summary
Jon has been the champion of VMLY&R’s phenomenal growth and success since becoming the new agency’s CEO in 2018, when VML and Y&R joined forces to deliver a contemporary, fully integrated offering on a global scale.
Each year he has led the agency has been marked by growth, this year double-digit. In 2021, the agency is estimating more than 15% year-over-year growth in the U.S. In addition to this, over the past year, VMLY&R has experienced unprecedented recognition and accomplishments, including:
Strong business results
Recognition of our excellence in technology, innovation in creativity
Dynamic, inclusive culture and focus on BIPOC transformation
Expansion of capabilities to deliver on our promise of creating connected brands
A LIFETIME OF ACHIEVEMENTS: CELEBRATING HIS SILVER ANNIVERSARY IN 2021
In 2021, Jon celebrated 25 years of leading the agency forward. He began his journey at VML in 1996, just a few years after the company’s creation. In his initial role as an account manager, he was one of only 28 employees. Jon quickly found his place within the company, thriving in a dynamic environment. He credits his knack for developing trusting relationships with clients as one of the major influences on his rise through the ranks.
As VML grew, he landed the title of company president. Later, as VML global CEO from 2011 to 2018, the number of employees increased to more than 3,000 across six continents.
Jon was a finalist for The Drum’s CEO of the Year in 2021.
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Entry credits
- Jon Cook, Global CEO, VMLY&R
- Jamie Dierking, Director, Communications, VMLY&R
Entry video
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Highly Commended
Company
Manifest
Summary
Alex Myers started Manifest from a kitchen table in 2009. Since then, it has opened five studios across the world, produced industry-defining work for brands as varied as Tommee Tippee, Logitech, and Samsung, won countless awards and grown to a turnover breaking the £5m mark. As the pandemic continued into 2021 and many agencies struggled to survive, Alex saw the opportunity to not only ‘build brands that change the world’ - his agency’s mission - but to become one. 2021 was a pivotal year for the agency. Global agency fees grew by 30% and profit margins tripled , driven by a mixture of strategic projects, including expansion of existing briefs into multiple creative disciplines, attracting new clients through an evolved proposition and expanding our horizons by opening an office in Melbourne, Australia. Not only that, Manifest’s global team more than doubled as we attracted some of the world’s most sought-after creative talent, we worked with nearly 30 new brands the world over and we picked up 22 industry accolades for our creative work. A committed advocate of communications for social good, Alex also sits on the board of three positive-impact brands, mentors industry leaders in brand purpose, and steers Manifest’s ventures division to build game-changing social enterprises of its own (a portfolio now valued in the £millions). Most importantly, Alex has changed what’s expected of an agency CEO, guiding this growth with an ego-free leadership philosophy and only two rules: work hard and be nice to people.
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Entry credits
- Alex Myers, Global CEO and Founder, Manifest
Entry video
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Award
Company
UNLIMITED
Summary
Under Tim’s stewardship, UNLIMITED has been transformed into the UK’s leading conversion agency. Together we are an insight-led, tech-enabled agency group focused on delivering better outcomes for clients. He’s put our Human Understanding Lab at the centre of the business, enabling us to drive performance through our deep understanding of human behaviour.
We are best-in-class for performance.
We have best-in-class, upper quartile client satisfaction.
We have a happy and engaged workforce.
Our superpower is our deeper human understanding.
We are UNLIMITED.
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Entry credits
- Erris de Stacpoole, PR, UNLIMITED
- Tim Bonnet, President , UNLIMITED
- Faye Hawkins, CRO, UNLIMITED
- Victoria Allen, EA, UNLIMITED
- Savanna-Lee Stevens, Designer, UNLIMITED
Entry video
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7
Startup of the Year
Nominated
Company
Funday Agency Ltd.
Summary
We’re a talented and entrepreneurial group of people who believe it pays to have fun. Our approach takes a balance of creativity and performance. Imagination and insight. Fun and brains. We have deep experience in web3 with a focus on knowledge and education rather than advertising gimmicks, and we've won globally recognized brands such as 7-Eleven and Arla Foods. We've grown to almost 60 people, across 3 countries and can't wait to grow into what's next.
We believe that every day is a Funday. Our employees and our clients think so too.
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Entry video
Entry credits
- All the funatics in the, Funday, funhouse
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Nominated
Company
Boldspace
Summary
Boldspace launched in May 2020 with a bold new agency model to serve the communications needs of modern, ambitious businesses. We call ourselves a brand value agency. We grow a client’s meaning, their reputation and their worth. We do this through brand building, communications and analytics and we are at our very best when we combine all three. Since launch, our unique formula of strategy and creativity powered by cutting-edge technology has made an objective, positive impact for over 50 clients – from large brands shaping their space like the Post Office, One&Only, VISA, and Fridays, to the most impressive scale-up brands of the future like Deel, carwow and pirkx. We have grown to 35 people across strategy, creative, PR, data, production, and many more - and we have done it all in the right way, being sustainable from the start as a carbon negative business, running a diversity & inclusion programme to address the problem of work experience in our industry, supporting some amazing charities, and giving 2% of profits away every year. But we are only just getting started - watch this space!
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Entry video
Entry credits
- Mike Robb, Co-CEO, Boldspace
- Nick Ford-Young, Co-CEO, Boldspace
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Highly Commended
Company
Aurora
Summary
Aurora was built and designed for a post-Covid world - to be the agency clients and society need. In less than 2 years Aurora, a Liverpool-headquartered agency with offices in North America, is playing on the global stage working with global brands, technology scale-ups and everything in between. From Lego Ventures to gaming giant Team 17, Aurora is single-minded in its vision to be the biggest, more disruptive agency outside of London.
Proudly female-founded by 2 pioneers from the worlds of gaming, entertainment and technology with over 50 years of experience between them, they play happily in the creative playground that is Web 3.0. Supporting both traditional and pioneering brands to experiment in the increasingly colliding physical and digital worlds that we now inhabit - and always with a laser-sharp focus on truly exceptional, cut-through content.
Born virtual, now hybrid, we delight in giving our diverse team the chance to work globally whether in Mexico City, Toronto, Liverpool or Paris. We believe passionately in the power of true inclusion and belonging to drive happiness, innovation and business performance - we are proud of our team stats - 80% female, 50% LGBTQ+ and 38% non-UK nationals. What’s more we drive social mobility through our support for talent locally and through mentoring of emerging talent.
And what does this all equate to - well in less than 2 years, we will have grown to a 25 person agency, turning over £1.25m and with over 20 clients, boom!! Oh…..and that’s just the start.
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Entry video
Entry credits
- Valerie Bounds, Co-Founder and Chief Creative and Strategy Officer, Aurora
- Dawn Paine, Co-Founder and CEO, Aurora
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Highly Commended
Company
half rhino
Summary
The Year of the Rhino.
Born in Asia, half rhino has built a borderless ‘brand and experience consultancy’ working with high profile clients across the globe - winning an S.E.A. and 2 global consultancy awards in the first 2 years of operation.
half rhino is on track to delivering over 40% growth this year, adding high-profile clients including JW Marriott, ERM, Tiger, Cargill and several tech start-ups.
They created a solution to client needs that is largely unmet by the larger groups and big consultancies – delivered through an open operating model that seamlessly blends capabilities and innovation across data, adtech, AI, gaming, business transformation and innovation. half rhino pride themselves on getting under the skin of their clients’ business – a true partner and an extension of their team.
Their model is based on open collaboration and partnership – creating solutions that bridge the gap between consultancy, creative and delivery. It has led to new wins from the more established networks, creative agencies, and consultancies across the world, 95% client retention and satisfaction scores of over 85%.
half rhino remains true to its vision, continuing to focus on culture, attracting a diverse team of talent, best in class partners, and delivering work that helps the community, focused on sustainability, wellbeing, and social impact.
The consultancy culture is based in personal development, wellbeing, and fun. ‘We work with people we like, who care passionately about what they do – and that are great at it”’.
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Entry credits
- Cat Lyon, Managing Partner, half rhino
- Sean OBrien, Managing Partner, half rhino
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Nominated
Company
WeDiscover
Summary
Imagine starting an agency exactly one week before a national lockdown due to a global pandemic.
Not exactly the perfect timing for launching a business. But that’s how WeDiscover got started.
Not only have they survived, they have thrived. Having just passed their second birthday, coming up to 20 full time employees, with turnover outstripping targets and £0 outside investment.
How have they done this? By relentlessly focusing on innovation and putting clients and employees at the centre of everything they do.
They are a Performance Marketing and Technology agency with a 95% pitch win record, whilst generating all new clients to date solely through referrals and recommendations, and they have exciting growth plans ahead to continue disrupting the status quo.
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Entry credits
- WeDiscover, full team, ,
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Nominated
Company
isin
Summary
isin is the straight-talking, disruptive-thinking design agency. A team of trend hunters, strategists, creatives and production specialists that plan, design and install brand experiences equipped for a connected world. They tell it as it is, push the boundaries of what’s possible and find new ways to connect the dots between brands and consumers. In just over two years isin has built an enviable client list including iconic brands like adidas, Vans and Dr Martens and executed cutting-edge campaigns and retail experiences all around the world.
With brand activations and pop-up shops continuing to grow in popularity, isin is committed to making sure that temporary retail is not at the expense of the environment and that sustainability lies at the heart of the design process. isin has introduced initiatives including designing flexible concepts that can be repurposed for future activations to minimise waste, the use of electric vehicles for all UK instals where possible and grouping deliveries to reduce carbon emissions.
isin’s founder launched isin just before the Covid-19 pandemic started. Having worked in the retail industry for sixteen-years prior he identified a pivotal opportunity to redefine how consumers engage with brands in-store, in-app and everywhere in between. isin now helps brands to navigate this evolved marketplace, transforming physical stores into unique experiences where digital and physical seamlessly connect and give consumers a reason to shop in store again. This success is rooted in the buy-in of the entire team whose commitment has been integral to the growth of the business.
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Entry video
Entry credits
- Team isin, Full Agency Team, isin
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Award
Company
Bicycle London
Summary
‘Few articles ever used by man have created as great a revolution in social conditions as the bicycle.’ US Census 1900
In 2021 six industry leaders came together to build a simple vehicle with a big ambition: to revolutionise our industry; for good, for once and for all.
Our motivations were simple. We wanted to:
1) Put the aspiration, creativity and fun back into a media industry that's become nothing more than a runt cousin of the banking world
2) Recognise that post-pandemic talent deserves better, not just more
3) Be truly diverse from the beginning, not the end; with no gimmicks, no PR-grabbing headlines
4) Create an exciting, compelling proposition for our clients - something desperately needed within a legacy-driven, stale marketplace where even great independent trailblazers have been consumed by the things they were built to challenge
5) Create a distinctive, authentic culture that isn’t built on bullshit, slogans or trite statements written on a wall
We underpinned our commitments in the most meaningful way possible; by putting our very own (and only our own) money where our mouth is
This is the story of how our humble invention became powerful; capable of accelerating at breakneck speed to such an extent that it blew our expectations out of the water.
We weren’t pedalling a bicycle - we were launching a rocket.
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Entry video
Entry credits
- Henry Daglish, CEO, Bicycle London
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7
New! Thought leader of the Year
Nominated
Company
MKTG Sports + Entertainment
Summary
Amar Singh is Senior Vice-President, Content and Comms of MKTG Sports + Entertainment, working closely with a host of global brands on the activation of their partnerships in sport. A former head of football strategy and senior brand manager for Budweiser, head of content at West Ham United and with a background as a Fleet Street journalist, Amar draws on his unique experience and insight to analyse and comment on some of the most topical and highly charged talking points in the sector addressing issues such as human rights, inequality and reputational missteps. Amar also edited and published MKTG Sport + Entertainment’s report Decoding The Modern Fan 2022, which was the first major global fan study following the pandemic and identified some major trends and opportunities relating to sports partnerships. It was downloaded more than 500 times on The Drum’s website. Amar’s Thought Leadership work always supports the marketing strategy of MKTG S+E and has helped position the agency as an expert in the ever-shifting expectations of fans and how to drive best practice in sports partnership work. As well as writing Thought Leadership pieces, Amar is also regularly asked to contribute to articles and has been quoted over the past 12 months by a host of organisations including The Athletic, SportsPro and The i newspaper. With more than 8000 Twitter followers and close to 7000 on LinkedIn, Amar often shares his views on sports marketing trends and issues on these platforms, as well as speaking at events in 2022 such as The New Sports Marketing Playbook panel at The Drum Labs and SportsPro Live.
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Entry credits
- Amar Singh, SVP, Content & Comms, MKTG Sports + Entertainment
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Nominated
Company
Opinium
Summary
Chris Curtis is Opinium’s Head of Political Polling.
His voice matters not because it purports his own agenda, but because he provides unbiased commentary on the ever-changing political landscape.
It matters because he informs and provokes debate about the issues that impact the lives of each and every one of us living in the UK today.
It matters because he breaks down complex issues into tangible and accessible insights that enable people to make informed choices.
And it matters because in doing so he challenges preconceptions and enables people to view the world differently.
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Entry credits
- Chris Curtis, Associate Director, Opinium
- Emily Dickinson, Director, Opinium
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Nominated
Company
Candyspace
Summary
From debating whether buying a car online can ever be as easy as ordering a pizza to helping businesses navigate a path through the personalisation/privacy paradox, Matt is a provocative and trusted voice within the digital community. Matt’s particular focus is the challenges long-standing businesses face in being able to digitally-transform at the speed required to counter the disruption in their particular sectors
Since becoming Managing Director of Candyspace in 2021, Matt has put thought leadership at the heart of the business’s marketing strategy. He’s led by example, authoring white papers and opinion pieces, leading webinars, speaking at industry events and participating in panels and discussions.
Matt is also passionate about inspiring the next generation of thought leaders and is a key figure in Candyspace’s Now+Next initiative – aimed at tackling the gender imbalance in the digital technology sector.
It’s through Matt’s combination of creative flair with deep technical knowledge and sharp visionary leadership that we believe Matt is the perfect recipient of The Drum Agency Awards - Thought Leader of the Year award.
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Entry credits
- Matt Simpson, Managing Director, Candyspace
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Award
Company
VMLY&R
Summary
N/A
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Entry credits
- Shawna Guevara, Campaign Program Manager, VMLY&R
- Chioma Nwana, Community Content Manager, VMLY&R
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
Silverbean
Summary
Since 2013 Nic has immersed himself into affiliate and partner marketing, supporting not only Silverbean but the global industry to diversify and increase share of wallet against other channels.
After serving 7 years managing and accelerating global account performance, in 2020 Nic transitioned into the commercial team for Silverbean focused on enterprise brands. Nic delivered +56% above the commercial team average revenue in year 1 and a staggering +371% increase in year 2.
Nic has solely executed his gravitas, cementing results through three key strategies:
1. Supporting Silverbean to create a unique position within the market
2. Established himself as a trusted thought leader within the industry, simply adding value to Affiliate and Partner Marketing Managers
3. Leveraging strategic partnerships to drive commercial growth
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Entry credits
- Nicholas Yates, Head of Global Affiliate Partnerships, Silverbean
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Highly Commended
Company
VMLY&R HEALTH
Summary
N/A
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Entry credits
- Claire Gillis, CEO, VMLY&R HEALTH
- Suzie Warner, Head of Communications, VMLY&R HEALTH
- Jamie Dierking, Director, Communications, VMLY&R
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Nominated
Company
Wild Visual Communications Ltd
Summary
Tim is a gentle force of nature. Kind, caring, and always happy to help support others in the industry he loves; yet his passion is so overwhelmingly powerful that you can't help but be swept away. For too long this passion combined with years of knowledge and expertise was known only to those lucky enough to work along side him, but Covid19 allowed him to find his voice, and since then it has only grown from strength to strength!
Primarily using the platform of LinkedIn, he provided hope and positivity that cut through the negativity and fear of 2021 through direct messaging and video content on his private platform, and via his curation of the Wild VC LinkedIn page and Shop Drop Daily. This passion has seen him inspire the next generation through university engagement, while driving conversation and evolution across the market.
Speaking to over 50,000 followers across his private, Wild and Shop Drop Daily accounts he has given a fresh perspective and always been happy to engage in dialogue regardless of the level of contact that reaches out. This willingness to connect and discuss and industry that he loves has led to various well known brands requesting his insight and strategic thinking to help define their future direction, while our own internal team can't help but be inspired.
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Entry credits
- John Bayly, Founder, Wild Visual Communications Ltd
- Pip Hulse, Projects Director, Wild Visual Communications Ltd
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5
New! Entrepreneur of the Year
Nominated
Company
Adam Ruaux, WeDiscover
Summary
Creating a successful business that’s able to gain traction and differentiate from its competitors is a daunting and difficult task for all budding entrepreneurs.
With over 25,000 marketing agencies in the UK - ranging from the niche to the established big players - standing out in the field is becoming increasingly challenging.
For WeDiscover, this is where co-founder Adam Ruaux’s impressive technical capabilities have helped elevate the wider teams’ expertise in performance marketing to create an agency that is unique.
Self taught, Adam displays an expert level of knowledge across wildly differing competencies. From single handedly building the business website from scratch to developing fully automated data architecture for clients, his range of skills and experience is truly incredible.
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Entry credits
- Adam Ruaux, Technical Director, WeDiscover
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Highly Commended
Company
Byron Tassoni-Resch, WeDiscover
Summary
Imagine starting an agency exactly one week before a national lockdown due to a global pandemic.
Not exactly the perfect timing for launching a business. But that’s how Byron Tassoni-Resch got started with the Performance Marketing and Technology agency WeDiscover.
Not only has it survived, it has thrived. Having just passed its 2nd birthday and coming up to 20 full time employees and on-track to smash turnover goals, with £0 outside investment.
How did Byron do this? By relentlessly focusing on innovation and putting clients and employees at the centre of everything he does.
Byron has re-invented the agency model by bringing together a tech team with sophisticated coding and data analysis competencies and pairing it with his understanding of the marketing industry to truly help unlock some of the most frustrating data challenges facing clients, helping them grow in ways other agencies simply can’t facilitate.
His vision for the company he manages has shaped it, bringing about rapid yet sustainable growth, increasing average revenue per client year on year and maintaining 100% employee retention since business launch.
From the unique challenge of launching a business at the beginning of a global pandemic and nationwide lockdown, a time when businesses had some of the lowest marketing budgets of all time, Byron has led his company from strength to strength.
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Entry credits
- Byron Tassoni-Resch, Managing Director, WeDiscover
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Nominated
Company
The DM Lab
Summary
With client success comes business success.
With this success we immerse ourselves into the local community, supporting those without the financial reach to hire us as a company. Leading by example, we help develop grassroots clubs, charities and events as part of an active corporate social responsibility drive. This is pursued by the directors’ personal passion for everything local over financial gain. Role models for both staff and other businesses, ensuring wellbeing in the workplace and sustainability are reflected and encouraged throughout the business from top level directors to junior staff and apprentices. Lending our expertise to a higher education organisation and veterans, helping a wide a range of people.
The DM Lab are strong advocates of corporate responsibility and are committed to supporting the local community. Although only a micro business themselves, they are heavily involved with a number of community endeavours. They help businesses grow and are in a strong position to offer their expertise within the community by supporting local sports clubs, events and organisations. As most are run by dedicated volunteers, we are able to assist in various capacities to help and compliment the work the volunteers and committees undertake at a professional level which we see as a good thing. Inspiring those around them to take action themselves and collaborate to help build relationships, develop projects, support visions, strengthen the community and work toward a brighter future together for all involved.
Now more than ever is the time to help those around us.
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Entry credits
- Dale Gammage, Creative Director, The DM Lab
Entry video
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Nominated
Company
Press Record Communications
Summary
I was born with a bad kidney that needed to be removed right after I was born. That’s why I call my work mode one-kidney-inspired entrepreneurship. The challenge of being born with an organ that couldn’t function, was the first and most crucial of many strands of adversity I would have to overcome. At a young age, I learned how to play sports like basketball and baseball with only one kidney and not get hurt. It was literally a matter of life and death, because if something happened to that one kidney, there was no telling what next steps would look like. Of course, with that peculiar limitation, there was no way to avoid being judged at a young age — friends and peers couldn’t help but joke about my kidney protector belt that made me stand out during gym class, Little League, or just playing at the park. I didn’t care. At 11, 12, I was in it to win it, I wanted to play. And though I didn’t know it at the time, coping with my vulnerability helped to prepare me for entrepreneurship, setting me on a path to learn the lessons that made it possible to build a six-figure business. To date, I have worked with a myriad of major corporations and brands like the Consumer Product Safety Commission, New York Public Library, AARP, National Safety Council, Clinton Global Initiative and General Motors, supporting their public relations and marketing initiatives. I owe it to that missing kidney.
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Entry credits
- Erin James, Founder, Agency Owner Lab
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Award
Company
MG Empower
Summary
When Maira Genovese decided to move to London in 2005 with limited knowledge of English, no contacts, and no job, she had a vision: start a business that would empower people. Leaving Brazil meant leaving a successful career behind and an exciting journey in American Express to dive into a completely new professional ecosystem and a path full of challenges. Her vision, combined with a passionate belief that excellence can only be achieved through meaningful purpose, formed the bedrock of values upheld through every facet of MG Empower - a new-age digital agency founded by Maira in 2017 in a light-bulb moment inside a London coffee shop. Inspired by the phenomenon of influencer marketing and driven by Maira's unique mindset, MG Empower quickly expanded and in two years, global brands like TikTok, Bumble, Biossance and Chopard were already part of its portfolio.
In 2021, another milestone: MG Empower was acquired by the US-headquartered Amyris Inc. to become a fully integrated digital powerhouse. Five business divisions, a new and innovative headquarters in London and a new operation in New York are now part of Maira Genovese's collection of accomplishments as the President of the company - yet led by the same purpose that started it all.
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Entry credits
- Maira Genovese, Founder & President, MG Empower
Entry video
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2
New! People’s Champion of the Year
Award
Company
Candyspace
Summary
Senior UX designer El is passionate about accessibility, diversity and providing opportunities for young women in digital and uses her platform as a senior UX designer at Candyspace to drive that ambition. Over the last 12 months, El has worked on innovative projects, envisioning what the future of work will look like for global businesses and challenging them to consider how their technologies could provide a more accessible workplace.
It is this human centric outlook that we value so highly in El. Any project she works on has a distinct and considerate approach to how to interweave the impact of technology on everyday experiences.
El’s passion for accessibility and inclusion has been demonstrated in her efforts as part of one of the leaders in founding Now+Next – a network of technology and digital professionals designed to inspire young women through understanding possibilities, providing connections and experience in STEM.
In the first year of Now+Next, El has demonstrated considerable impact, including at the first in-person event where El led a short session on the UX breakdown of TikTok to introduce over 80 secondary school girls to the versatility of design as a career. El’s honesty and transparency about her route into digital and the realities of working as a designer helped inspire many of the girls present to consider an industry they originally had viewed as inaccessible.
El’s demonstrable efforts and results are why we consider her a true people’s champion.
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Entry credits
- El Reeve, Senior UX Designer, Candyspace
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Nominated
Company
VMLY&R Health
Summary
N/A
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Entry credits
- Walt Geer, Chief Experience Design Officer, VMLY&R
- Jamie Dierking, Director, Communications, VMLY&R
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6
New! Best Place to Work of the Year
Highly Commended
Company
Propellernet
Summary
We invest heavily in our company’s culture, programmes and practice in order to be a great place to do great things. We achieve this through strong values and by having confidence in our team. Rather than just creating attention-grabbing benefit headlines, we review what really matters to our team and know that this programme will constantly adapt and change based on their needs. 100% of our team would recommend Propellernet as a Great Place to Work and we have a staff retention rate of 94%. In addition, we are achieving record levels of profitability with 148.1% organic revenue growth in 2021 and a revenue per head of £135,244. And while we can go on for ages on why we think we are a great agency to work for, our people can sum it up best.
“Absolutely no egos or politics, it's fantastic. It's a bunch of incredibly talented people who are passionate about their expertise, doing amazing work for fantastic brands - it really is a dream job. We are all given trust and autonomy regardless of position and tenure and it has bred an incredibly supportive and empowering workplace to be a part of. The team are constantly looking for ways to support us as people and celebrate our achievements. It genuinely makes me feel guilty when I talk to friends who work in other sectors as to how well we are looked after, all employers should treat their teams in this way.”
GPTW survey, 2022
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Entry credits
- Georgie Monaghan, Sales and Marketing Director, Propellernet
- James Sandford, MD, Propellernet
- Jo Humphreys, People Manager, Propellernet
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Nominated
Company
Rooster Punk
Summary
Hello! We’re Rooster Punk and we’ve got a confession. We’re only human. You’re only human too, whoever you are and whatever you do. We all f**k up, fall in love, try new things, get upset, excited, anxious and uplifted.
The knowledge that we’re all human sits at the heart of our marketing and of our agency culture. If you think we sound like a load of hippies, you’re wrong – we’re a Coop full of Rooster Punks. We’re challenging the status quo of agency cultures which reward over-work and under-fulfilment; which prize youth above experience or seniority above skill; which value the outspoken over the thoughtful; and which promote work as more important than family and health.
Too good to be true? It’s not philanthropy, it’s enlightened self-interest. Our mantra is Fun, Fame and Fortune: if you have fun doing business, you’ll become famous for your work and that will lead to fortune – for you and your clients.
Read on to hear how we built a culture described by employees as ‘a place where you can truly belong’, which ‘treats people like real humans’ and which ‘stands by its mission to humanize B2B’. How we achieved 80% employee retention rates against the backdrop of “the great resignation”. How we grew the team by 61%, delighted clients – who are spending on average 64% more per project, year on year – and basked in the glow of weekly self-reported employee happiness scores of 8.2 out of 10.
Entry credits
- James Trezona, Chief Punk, Rooster Punk
- Paul Cash, Chief Rooster, Rooster Punk
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Highly Commended
Company
Assembly
Summary
Assembly (formerly Media Assembly and ForwardPMX), is a global community of 1,500+ omnichannel media, business consulting, data and technology experts in over 20 countries around the world. We bring the best in data, talent and technology together – the ingredients of the modern media agency. Our agency’s proposition is to help brands find the change that fuels growth. It holds us accountable for challenging the status quo and it encourages us to stay invested in how our work and influence can positively change the world around us. We seek to find and deliver change across three core pillars; Product (our tech + services), Partners (our clients and publishers/platforms we work closely with) and Purpose (People, DE&I and Impact). We’re an agency that’s extremely proud to say we’re a force for good, not just for profit. These core beliefs are shared across our entire agency, which has a truly global footprint. Purpose and Impact have been ingrained in Assembly for over a decade and started as a grassroots initiative to deliver digital expertise to up and coming social entrepreneurs and startups. We now extend our impact initiatives to support clients in their CSR programs and the agency is currently completing B-Corp certification. We’ve always been trailblazers in the Purpose space, having had a dedicated Head of Impact role based in our London hub since 2014. Our People team is innovative in shifting away from legacy ways of working by doing the best for our people in this modern, flexible environment.
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Entry credits
- Abby Kersch, Head of People , Assembly Global
- Giselle Fernandes, Head of People (Interim), Assembly Global
- Sophia Parsons, Global Parterships and Comms Lead, Impact, Assembly Global
- Gaby Sethi, Global Head of Impact, Assembly Global
- Neil Middlemas, Head of Talent Acquisition, Assembly Global
- Sarah Flannery, Head of Client Development, Assembly Global
- Darren Fullerton, Head of Organic, Content & Design, Assembly Global
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Award
Company
Porter Novelli
Summary
Culture is an outcome of doing the right thing.
Pizza Tuesdays and drinks trolley Fridays had their moment, but times have changed. Motivations are different, what colleagues value and want from their careers has shifted demonstrably.
To win, we had to shift too.
Our goals started with people and included increasing the percentage of people of colour in the business from 8% to 30% by 2023; to increase the number of women in leadership to above 50%; to retain 85% of our employees and; to improve staff engagement scores to above 75%. We needed to increase revenue by 10% revenue and client satisfaction to 85%. We smashed them all.
We completely re-booted our proposition externally which rallied around helping clients close the say-do gap. This became the backbone of our culture as we ran the values through the whole business internally. Aligning with our external proposition, we have a say-do code of conduct which guides how we show up for each other. We revamped our learning and our benefits, refreshed our colleague experience and put DE&I firmly at the centre of our strategy. Policies are policies but it’s the outcomes that matter and ours do the talking. We shifted gear and it’s working. We are winning the battle to retain, inspire and attract talent. After all, culture is an outcome of doing the right thing.
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Entry credits
- Sarah Shilling, EVP, Porter novelli
- Chris Mullan, Marketing Lead , Porter Novelli
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Nominated
Company
StrategiQ
Summary
In September 2021, we set the vision to grow our Agency. This was in line with our 5-year plan - that didn’t account for the pandemic - and the ensuing changes in demand and expectation from clients and employees.
In short, people wanted/needed more money AND more flexibility. We decided that investing in people was still integral to the success of the agency, and in 2020/2021 we grew, prioritising people.
So what did we do? We leveraged a new structure, discipline and a shared vision; engaging the whole agency was crucial.
We needed to sell more, reposition our brand to move up the value chain, and sit confidently and comfortably in a market laced with uncertainty. We needed to improve company wide utilisation, increase investment in headcount, pay our existing team more, increase our training budgets and get the right people on the right seats. Nothing like a challenge then!
Fast forward to August 2022 and we have already hit our sales target, with a month to go.
What sits at the heart of it? Well, the numbers are lovely, but most notably, this has been achieved with an 85% client satisfaction score and an 83% team happiness score (visible in our purpose-built agency OS platform).
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Entry credits
- Andy Smith, CEO, StrategiQ
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Nominated
Company
Momentum Worldwide
Summary
Known for creating industry-first experiences that position brands in the heart of culture, at Momentum Worldwide we live by the credo “it’s not what brands say, it’s what they do that matters.”
And, as we’ve adjusted to a new way of working, we’re proud to have progressed on our DE&I, sustainability and wellness journeys. Just some of the highlights include:
Introducing Welcome Forward, our new working model that allows people to move with intention across our three main workspaces: the home office, our newly remodeled “clubhouse” offices and inspiration sites.
Forming the first global partnership with isla, the event industry’s sustainability body, to roll out TRACE, a real-time carbon impact tool for physical and virtual experiences.
Our climate action plan has been third-party certified to the standards of ISO 14001 and ISO 20121, globally recognized as best practice for environmental management.
Launching our Active Citizenship Program and our global Time Well Taken initiative.
Opening our commitment to DE&I for all to see across our digital and social media channels to hold ourselves publicly accountable.
Partnering with mental health benefit platform MYNDUP to offer employees free and anonymous access to 1:1 mental health virtual sessions.
Maintaining high employee retention, attracting more diverse talent and moving our business forward by putting the humanity of every individual at the heart of our business.
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Entry credits
- * *, *, *
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5
New! Most Innovative Agency of the Year
Nominated
Company
Stein IAS
Summary
With radical changes in technology (i.e. Web3) threatening to disrupt how B2B brands engage customers, Stein IAS recognizes the opportunities ahead ¬– from NFTs and blockchain integrations powering access to content and physical events, to metaverse environments enabling richer and more interactive sales engagements.
These concepts are mostly in their infancy, but one has now augmented how we connect brand to demand to drive growth: Artificial Intelligence.
By investing in AI tools, partnering with AI vendors and developing new technologies, Stein IAS puts intelligence at the critical stages of strategy and activation, enabling clients like Trelleborg, Lexmark and Juniper Networks to deliver the most advanced GTM plans ever.
AI requires an effective strategy and plan to learn. It needs Human Intelligence. At Stein IAS, we nurture that intelligence by helping agency practitioners build the core skills needed to strategize and operate the technology to maximum effect. We achieve this by investing in Learn for Your Life, the industry’s most advanced training program, designed to blend mind and machine for delivering award-winning B2B campaigns.
When Artificial and Human Intelligence come together, magic happens – and our clients’ results are the proof. For Web3 early adopters Trelleborg and Lexmark, it has delivered transformative growth, enabling both to claim a WARC B2B effectiveness award at Cannes in the process.
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21102 DAB Most Innovative AOTY A4.pdf
Entry credits
- The Stein, IAS , Team
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Nominated
Company
Critical Mass
Summary
Hi there,
we’re Critical Mass (but our friends call us CM—please call us CM). We design
unparalleled brand experiences that connect with people, and digital is how we
do it.
What makes
us so innovative? We have uncompromising standards when it comes to innovation,
and yet we look for opportunities to innovate everywhere—with clients, and
inside our own agency. Without a culture of innovation, and a culture shaped by
innovation, how can you really hope to innovate for globally renowned brands?
We never
lose sight of the simple truth that good innovation is all about people and
experiences, and that's why we're evolving and launching innovative services,
such as Performance CX, new Proprietary tools, and a digital production service
called ArtBot. We'll also look at how our open culture of innovation has led to
some of industry's most inventive and purposeful internal programs and
initiatives.
In short,
we innovate everything we see, transform our clients' businesses, and try to
leave the world a little better off than how we found it.
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Entry credits
- Chris Gokiert, CEO, Critical Mass
- Andrea Lennon, President, Critical Mass
- Val Carlson, Chief Creative Officer, Critical Mass
- Sara Anhorn, Chief Talent Officer, Critical Mass
- Alissa Hansen, Executive Vice President, Head of Production, Critical Mass
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Nominated
Company
The Keenfolks
Summary
The Keenfolks represent an idea for change. Born out of a shared vision for innovation and followed through with relentless passion.
In 2018 we founded The Keenfolks - a hybrid between consultancy, agency, and technology startup and launched a new category: Digital Gap Management. Today this vision brought us to 2 offices in Barcelona and Mexico city, operations on 40 markets, 7M revenue, and 13 global brands in our portfolio.
Our innovation-driven strategies help multinational companies to create and execute global and local digital transformation initiatives with a focus on delivering business value. We work with global brands, including Coca-Cola, Danone, Femsa, Mars, Reckitt, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, ISDIN, and more.
We are more than just an agency, we are a technology company that creates proprietary solutions. We created the disruptive and innovative Scoretize platform to measure your digital marketing, sales, and e-commerce efficiency against direct competitors and industry benchmarks.
To empower our team personally and professionally, we implemented the Process Communication Model, a management and communication tool that considers individual personalities and motivations that NASA uses in its astronaut selection program. We sustainably doubled our capabilities last year through hiring, training, and implementing the agile methodology.
Our commitment to developing the digital leaders of tomorrow led us to launch the Keen Academy, a sponsored Digital Gap Management internship program. We helped 30 A-level talent become hybrid professionals and quantum marketers.
We also launched our “AI-first agency” team to implement conscious automation that increases efficiency in every single.
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Entry credits
- Juan Manuel Patiño Herrera , EURAM & Martech BUD, The Keenfolks
- Judith Vila, LATAM BUD, The Keenfolks
- Alfonso Villegas, Data & AI Director, The Keenfolks
- Oleksandra Buhakova, Product Marketing Director, The Keenfolks
- Gerard Anguela Martinez , Global Content Marketing and Communications Hub Director, The Keenfolks
- Varun Thirtha, Director of Marketing Intelligence & USA Development, The Keenfolks
- Gabriel Navarro , Account Director, The Keenfolks
- Juan Salvador Lopez Garcia, Account Director, The Keenfolks
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Award
Company
Manifest
Summary
Since its inception in 2009, Manifest has been intent on reinventing the agency model – not just for the benefit of client work, but also the career development of communications professionals in our team and across the industry at large.
We’ve continually pushed for progress across the triple bottom line, investing in our people and the planet around us, with record-breaking improvements to our own business performance culturally, creatively and financially in the process.
At a time when most agencies were looking to take stock, Manifest set an objective to grow by 30%, expand its team to incorporate new skillsets, and to evolve into a new agency proposition better equipped for a post-pandemic world.
As a result, fees grew by over 40%, driven by strategic projects, expansion into multiple creative disciplines, attracting new clients through an evolved proposition and expanding our horizons to the Southern Hemisphere by opening an office in Melbourne, Australia.
Our profit grew by record levels, we picked up more than 20 industry awards, we attracted some of the world’s most sought-after creative talent and we worked with 15 incredible new brands we’re proud to call partners.
We invested in our own innovations with a new agency model, a bespoke CPD platform and a proprietary influencer collaboration platform, and powered the innovations of others, becoming co-founders of four social enterprises through our ventures arm, Make.
We did all of the above through the pursuit of a single agency mission: to build brands that change the world.
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Entry credits
- Alex Myers, CEO, Manifest
- Tom Winterton, Director, Manifest
- Julian Obubo, Manifest, Manifest
- Bec Chelin, Managing Director, Manifest
- Ali Maynard James, Managing Partner, Manifest
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Nominated
Company
VMLY&R
Summary
N/A
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Entry credits
- Jamie Dierking, Director, Communications, VMLY&R
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