Excellence Awards 2018: winners and highly commended

Our Excellence Awards have been going since 1985, with one of the first winners being Sir James Espey. 

And Marketing Society Global Ambassador, Hugh Burkitt, spoke to him back in 2015, on the 30-year anniversary of our awards. Watch their chat.

Anyway, the point we're trying to make is that our awards have history and heritage.

So we don't use the term lightly, but the winners really do represent excellence - a gold standard of bold and brave marketing.

This year, Bodyform was awarded the prestigious Grand Prix prize and Mark Evans, marketing director at Direct Line Group was crowned the 2018 Marketing Society Marketing Leader of the Year in association with Campaign. Skittles took the new `Bravest Brand’ award.

The judges, chaired by Marketing Society president, Diageo’s Syl Saller awarded the Grand Prix to Bodyform because of its courageous and powerful campaign tackling the taboo subject of how periods are presented in advertising - normalising periods and empowering women in the process.

Members of The Marketing Society and readers of Campaign voted Mark Evans our Marketing Leader of the Year because of the truly ground-breaking campaigns launched under his tenure including, Fleetlights Legacy and Smart Crossings both of which demonstrate a convention-defying, approach to marketing.

Our chief exec, Gemma Greaves, said, “our members and readers of Campaign have spoken and chosen Mark Evans from an impressive shortlist of marketing leaders - and about time too. As well as his outstanding work at Direct Line (which speaks for itself), Mark’s passion for change, notably his work championing neurodiversity, is an inspiration to us all and highlights the human side of marketing - something very close to my heart.

“I’m also delighted to recognise the rising talent of Hannah Pain - our 2018 Young Marketing Leader of the Year.  Hannah is an impressive individual. We were looking for somebody who combined brave leadership with business results, someone with the X-Factor.  It was an incredibly tough competition, but Hannah had the edge over other candidates. She’s a formidable leader and role model- I’m certain we’ll hear a lot about her in the future.

“For the first time we included a prize for the `Bravest Brand’ and the judges awarded this to Skittles for their courage in handing over their rainbow logo to the L-G-B-T community during Pride month, with the message, ‘Only one rainbow matters’ ...while their own branding and product went monochrome.”

Now enough from us, below is what you came here for, the winning and highly commended entries.

Enjoy, and congratulations to all those that made the shortlist, as well as the winners and highly commended.

WATCH

Hit play to go behind the scenes and find out what the judges were looking for from this years' entries.