Cadbury, Guinness and ITV win big at the Marketing Week Awards

The winners of the Marketing Week Awards were revealed at a glittering ceremony last night, with Cadbury, Guinness, ITV and Sage among the companies recognised at the event, sponsored by Ozone.

Cadbury claimed the coveted Grand Prix award after a stellar 2023, which saw the brand praised for its innovation, strength of purpose and commitment to long-term brand building. The chocolate company ramped up investment in its ‘There’s a Glass and a Half in Everyone’ platform, credited for rebuilding the brand, reaching record household penetration and increasing annual revenue by £261m.

The chocolate giant also won the Marketing Week Award for Multichannel Marketing in recognition of its Christmas campaign ‘Secret Santa’, which delivered £230m in festive revenue.

Guinness was awarded the prestigious Brand of the Year accolade after enjoying its “best year” according to parent company Diageo. In Europe alone the Irish stout grew net sales by 20% during the 2023 financial year, gaining share in the on-trade across Great Britain and Ireland.

Having notched up double digit growth across Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as Asia Pacific, Guinness grew 16% overall in the 12 months to June thanks to innovations such as non-alcoholic Guinness 0.0 and at-home serving product Nitrosurge.

Guinness scoops Brand of the Year prize

In February, Marketing Week columnist Mark Ritson highlighted Guinness as an example of “fundamental marketing done brilliantly”, championing the use of key brand assets, social listening and constant learning.

Meanwhile, Boots CMO Pete Markey was crowned Marketer of the Year, a category sponsored by Digitas. Markey was selected from a shortlist of the highest-rated marketers in Marketing Week’s Top 100, also sponsored by Digitas.

The Boots marketing boss has made a significant impact since joining the retailer in November 2020. Markey has built on a series of successful campaigns, securing a 20% budget uplift for last year’s ‘Summer Better Be Ready’, which delivered a £2.50 return on investment for every £1 spent.

Under Markey’s watch Boots has recruited 1.1 million new loyalty members thanks to its biggest Advantage Card push to date. The attention paid to loyalty and creativity is paying off for Boots, which posted an 11.7% uplift in sales during the fourth quarter.

Marketing Team of the Year was awarded to law firm Addleshaw Goddard. Despite having never run a brand campaign prior to 2021, the company’s revamped marketing team drove a 25% increase in search traffic, as well as record engagement and press interest.

Another brand to win big was ITV, which scooped three awards for Brand Innovation, Data-Driven Marketing and Sport, Gaming and Entertainment.

Having identified a cohort of 23 million people ripe for reappraisal of the brand, the broadcaster built internal support for the £165m launch of its ITVX streaming service.

Thanks to a segmentation project fed into the broadcaster’s customer data platform Flex, ITV became 69% better at predicting which users would upgrade to its premium subscription. The work paid off, with ITVX monthly users up 2 million since the campaign’s launch.

New for 2023

The 2023 Marketing Week Awards included two new categories celebrating B2B marketing. The accolade for Best Use of ABM went to IT services giant NTT. The company’s customised, one-to-one approach for strategic clients helped drive millions in pipeline and forge hundreds of new customer relationships.

Marketing Week’s inaugural award for Brand Building Excellence in B2B was presented to Sage, which drove a 12% revenue boost through a new focus on human-centric brand building. Its marketers developed more than 1,160 assets spanning channels from TV to outdoor, which fed into new creative platform ‘Voices of Business’.

Other multiple winners on the night include Virgin Media O2, which scooped the accolades for Brand Purpose and won in the Media and Telecoms category for its ‘Christmas Sim Card’ campaign tackling data poverty.

Winner of both the Financial Services and Diversity and Inclusion awards, HSBC was recognised for driving a 1,400% uplift in financial abuse awareness and helping survivors regain financial independence.

Mars Wrigley’s audacious move to cut Bounty from the Celebrations tub caused a global stir, helping the chocolate giant win the Marketing Week Awards for Consumer Goods and PR and Brand Storytelling. The push to #BringBackBounty delivered 452 million Twitter impressions and social conversation across 30 countries, reaching an estimated 75 billion people worldwide.

Boots’ Pete Markey named Marketer of the Year

Another multiple award winner is Specsavers, which scooped the accolade for Health and Life Sciences by flipping its ‘I don’t go to Specsavers…’ line on its head to promote home visits. Awareness of the at-home service rose from 28% to 56% as a result.

The retailer also flexed its research muscle to drive a 22.9% increase in sign-ups for its contact lenses packages through new campaign ‘Kiss Clash’, recognised with the award for Insight and Market Research.

Victorious in the Retail and Ecommerce category, Tesco embarked on a mission to stand up for festive joy in 2022 by forming The Christmas Party. The festive campaign drove a 20-point increase in positive sentiment about Tesco, delivering a value perception of 39%.

The supermarket also scooped the award for Social Media after reaching 42 million people on TikTok with its ‘Clubcard Accepted’ campaign, which saw more than 3,000 audition to become the voice of the checkout. The campaign helped Tesco deliver a 7% uplift in Clubcard usage.

Russell Parsons, Marketing Week’s Editor in Chief, says: “It’s been another bruising year for everyone in marketing. More reason than ever to take a moment to spotlight and celebrate the depth and breadth of achievement everyone in marketing should be proud of. Congratulations to our winners, and everyone that was shortlisted.”

The full list of 2023 Marketing Week Awards winners can be viewed on the Winners’ Showcase.