Brand Of The Year 2024: The Shortlist

We are delighted to announce the shortlist for our Brand of The Year 2024

The Marketing Society Brand of the Year award, in partnership with EPAM and in association with Campaign, celebrates the brands that have innovated and adapted to the social and economic challenges in yet another challenging year.

Last year’s winner was Lucky Saint, with previous recipients of the accolade including Dove, Sainsbury’s, John Lewis, The Guardian, Cancer Research, Channel 4 and O2.

We launched the Award in 2009 and 2024's celebration will be held at our Annual Dinner on 26 November at City Central at The HAC, where our audience will have the chance to vote and crown the winner via a live vote.

VOTING IS NOW OPEN HERE

Judging for the award considered factors including brands’ ability to adapt to changing customer needs, the creativity and originality of campaigns, commercial impact, and the brand’s wider impact on the plant.

THE SHORTLIST

Greggs

This very British brand continues to defy the high-street exodus, increasing sales while investing heavily in engagement programmes and customer loyalty initiatives. Its commitment to ensuring physical availability has led to late-night openings and store expansions, while new and extended product ranges and greater availability via digital channels have kept customers engaged. Clever innovations and collaborations, including the “Baked in gold” jewellery range, Greggs Champagne Bar in Fenwick and a sausage-roll dispenser with Monzo, alongside its work in local communities (recently opening its 1000th breakfast club), have all contributed to the brand’s rise.

Heinz

Since launching its global platform “It has to be Heinz”, consumers have been the driver of the food giant’s adverting campaign, directly integrating them with the brand. Heinz’s clever collaborations, including with Absolut vodka and KitKat have also boosted the brand. Despite the cost-of-living crisis, engagement via social channels enabling communications directly with consumers, frequent product innovations and a move into festivals have all contributed to the brand’s phenomenal growth, which has increased by 50% in the past five years. 

Huda Beauty

This is a brand that takes a stand with a bold social presence. Claiming never to have spent money on advertising, its effective marketing strategy includes influencer and blogger collaborations, data-driven decision making and creating smart immersive, experiential campaigns. As part of its sustainability pledge, Huda Beauty reduced its product line by 50% to reduce waste and has donated money to many humanitarian causes. It also promotes diversity and inclusivity via its channel, while founder Huda Kattan is praised for listening and responding to customers and frequently speaking about her failures and mistakes. 

IKEA

IKEA has continued to stay true to its brand, understanding its audience and targeting ads accordingly. Its focus on creating clever products such as work-from-home desks, introducing furniture for rent and enabling customers to sell their unwanted furniture back to IKEA to be reused, has resonated with today’s sustainability-conscious consumer. With a clever website and app featuring a 3D-modelling system that allows customers to see products in their homes before buying, coupled with the expansion of smaller city-based stores, Ikea’s agility in adapting to changing customer needs and concerns is paramount. 

Lidl

Lidl continues to attract consumers and is now the sixth-biggest supermarket in the UK by market share, closing the gap on nearest competitor Morrisons. A continuous programme of innovation has kept it relevant, including a recent groundbreaking plan to have plant-based proteins making up 25% of its total protein sales by 2030. In-store food banks, the Lidl Plus app, which offers tailored food coupons direct to customers, and its light-touch marketing campaigns have highlighted the way in which the food retailer understands and responds to swiftly changing customer needs.

Liquid Death

This canned-water start-up turned the bottled-water market on its head with a massive gothic punch. It is now one of the most successful soft-drink innovators in recent years. Products come in an “infinitely recyclable” aluminium can – a far more sustainable option than traditional plastic bottles. Its bold and brave approach to marketing, fuelling Instagram and TikTok accounts with huge followings, uses a blend of comedy and satire to create its distinct brand of entertaining content. This, alongside its pledge to donate a portion of its proceeds to non-profits helping to fight plastic pollution and bringing clean drinking water to those in need, have contributed to the brand's rapid rise.

Marks & Spencer

By following a programme of diversification, finding gaps in the beauty market, bringing in new fashion talent, innovative digital programmes and linking up with Ocado, M&S has emerged from a challenging period to become a hero of the high street, outperforming many other retailers (30% of Ocado purchases are now M&S products). Clever social programmes, positioning its food as a cheaper alternative to eating out, celebrity collaborations and using music to good effect in its ads have all helped make M&S a consumer-driven and data-centric brand that now resonates with a younger age group. 

Monzo

With more than nine million customers, this year Monzo reached profitability for the first time since it was founded nine years ago. Getting the basics right from the start, it has grown rapidly through word of mouth. It recently more than doubled its marketing spend to grow brand awareness, releasing its first brand campaign in five years (only its second ever campaign). A clever partnership with Greggs, including a sausage-roll dispenser, a focus on people and the planet with a commitment to becoming net zero by 2030, as well as product diversification into loans and pensions, have smoothed the brand's move into the mainstream.

Specsavers

This long-standing innovator is aiming to reposition itself from being seen as a supermarket for glasses to a local provider for glasses and hearing health. It is now focused on a community-based approach that makes smarter use of social channels. With creative consistency, investing in marketing and moving into the hearing-loss sector, Specsavers has elevated itself into a category of one: a service company with a direct-to-consumer platform dedicated to changing people’s lives through better sight and hearing. 

Vinted

Another brand that has recorded its first year in profit, the second-hand fashion marketplace has returned 60% growth year on year. Employing customer data and innovation to propel its success, it uses marketing to focus on its ease of use, tapping into sustainability and cost-of-living challenges. A focus on creative and inclusive storytelling that is never preachy, while helping to mitigate the harm of fast, cheap fashion, has proved a winner with consumers. Expansion into designer and luxury fashion, working with influencers and successful sponsorships with Hollyoaks and Big Brother, Vinted has become a brand that has multi-generational appeal.

Join us at our Annual Dinner on 26 November to crown the winner via live vote and to celebrate the ingenuity, passion and drive of our industry.

Don't forget you can vote now >>> VOTE ONLINE NOW Brand of the Year 2024 - open until 20 November at 12pm.

Shortlist announced first in Campaign, with permission to share content.