Behind the Scenes: Brand Communication (Medium)

Key Category Overview: Brand Communication (Small, Medium, Large)

This category celebrates exceptional strategic brand storytelling that creates deep audience connections and drives measurable impact. We're looking for outstanding examples of how brands articulate their narrative consistently and compellingly across channels. Show us how you translated brand essence into powerful communications, built cohesive narratives across touchpoints, maintained consistency and drove cut through, adapted messaging for different audiences and balanced creative impact with strategic objectives to drive meaningful business results.

Judges will be looking for evidence of:

• Strategic clarity and creative excellence
• Depth of audience understanding
• Innovation in communication approach
• Quality of message crafting and delivery
• Effectiveness of channel strategy
• Consistency across touchpoints
• Measurable outcomes, including:
  • Brand metric improvements
  • Audience engagement levels
  • Message comprehension
  • Commercial impact
  • Share of voice
  • Brand distinctiveness scores

BRAND COMMUNICATION (MEDIUM - £5M TO £15M) The Real Cost of Beauty is Greater than You Think (click the link to access the case study)

From: Ogilvy and Dove

Also won - BRAND PURPOSE

Winning Characteristics:

1. Scale of Ambition:

- Went beyond just brand and commercial objectives

- Had broader societal ambition

- Demonstrated ambition that transcended category norms

2. Risk-Taking and Innovation:

- Successfully pushed boundaries

- Took bold risks that set it apart from other entries

- Demonstrated innovative thinking

3. Excellence in Execution:

- Outstanding execution of the concept

- Strong measurable results

- Dominated across all six judging criteria

4. Marketing Industry Impact:

- Advanced the marketing discipline as a whole

- Demonstrated marketing's potential as a force for good

- Actually delivered on purpose (not just talked about it)

5. Overall Contribution:

- Made a meaningful contribution beyond just commercial success

- Showed how marketing can create genuine societal change

- Set itself apart from the start with clear vision and impact

What particularly stands out is how the campaign managed to balance commercial success with genuine societal impact - something the judge noted is often talked about but rarely achieved in practice.

The Real Cost of Beauty is Greater than You Think: A Winning Case Study

At a time when many brands are retreating from purpose-driven marketing, Dove's "Cost of Beauty" campaign demonstrates how taking a bold stand on societal issues can deliver both commercial success and meaningful change. By tackling the devastating impact of toxic beauty content on young girls' mental health, Dove didn't just raise awareness - they pushed for legislative action through the Kids Online Safety Act while driving impressive business results, including a 5.5% increase in sales and reaching 6.6 billion impressions. The campaign shows that when purpose is deeply connected to a brand's core mission and executed with genuine commitment to driving change, it can create what they call "compound creativity" - achieving both social impact and business growth that builds over time.

"Dove has to be applauded for leading with a purpose before it became a thing. Brilliant activations led on insight and driving connection points" - Helen Whetton, BT and Judge.

Mark Doyle, Chief Marketing Officer, AIB and judge in this category summarised the winning qualities as:

"What really set them apart was the scale of the ambition and it was beyond a brand ambition, it was beyond a category or commercial ambition... it also really had a more societal ambition.  It really brought it home with the idea of what it does for marketing in general... it just showed that marketing can be a force for good. We talk about that a lot, but really you seldom see case studies that actually deliver on that." 

Find out more about The Marketing Society Global 2025 Awards categories in our entry kit - access it here.