WiM Awards 2021 Categories
Submission for the 2021 awards are closed
Best Leader in Marketing
This category recognises the client and the agency leaders who have demonstrated exemplary communications leadership in the course of the past year. This is open to client-side and agency professionals who can demonstrate how their leadership impacted the performance of their organisation, their staff, their clients and their customers, their products and/or services and their bottom line.
The winner is one who demonstrates self-awareness, decisiveness in the face of challenging circumstances, the size of the business challenge tackled and the ability to inspire others around her. Submissions must tell the story of the leader’s journey, setting objectives, leading a change agenda, creating and implementing a strategy through others. It can also include the events – personal and professional – that have shaped this nominee’s route to her role as a Communications leader. How many employers, promotions and years has this nominee experienced to attain a leadership role. Nominations for this category can come from teams, individuals or self-nominations, with the judges looking for both a client-side and an agency winner.
The Change Maker Award – Sponsored by Intuit/QuickBooks
This award recognises those people re-shaping marketing within their firms and female founders disrupting industry models.
This award will be given to a female candidate who has demonstrated evidence of acting as an ‘intrapreneur’ within an organisation by identifying opportunities, bringing new ideas and driving positive change or alternatively female founders disrupting industry models. The winner will be an individual who uses market insights to inspire, innovate, influence and ultimately drive action within an organisation or as a company founder in the wider marketing industry.
The One to Watch
This award recognises someone whose advancement through Marketing roles has been fast with a correlated expansion of responsibilities and achievements. The individual will have less than 7 years’ experience, as a marketing professional in any sector either client or brand side, and will demonstrate a comprehensive understanding and application of marketing best practice. They will have achieved tangible success with their product, brand or organisation, which should be clearly captured and presented as part of the submission.
Submissions must explain the marketing objectives and how these fit into the wider business strategy, indicate how success was measured, and quantify the impact on performance and return-on-investment. The submission should be supported by testimonials from senior management colleagues verifying the success achieved.
The Independent Consultant
This award recognizes someone who works as an independent marketing consultant. The individual can work entirely on their own, or as part of an affiliation with another consultancy practice but must be self-employed. In their work they will demonstrate a comprehensive understanding and application of marketing best practice, ambition and innovation, as well as be able to show a notable growth and development of their business practice and client list. They will have achieved tangible success in their approach, which should be clearly captured and presented as part of the submission.
Best Marketing Leader in Creating Change in Health & Wellness Award
This category recognises a female leader from brand or agency who can demonstrate delivering a real change that has helped their organisation create a better working environment through health and wellness initiatives. Submissions must tell the story of the leader’s objectives setting, leading a change agenda to improve health and wellness within the company.
Public Health and Disease Awareness Award – 2021 sponsored by VMLY&Rx
This award will recognise a female lead from a brand or agency within the health and wellness sector – this can include pharmaceutical, veterinary, mental health, charities, wellness, academic, NGO, and public health service.
The winner is someone who has led a campaign that demonstrates a positive change in the lives of the target audience through a public health and wellness campaign. Submissions must: tell the story of the campaign, explain the strategy and the setting of goals, demonstrate multiple levels of engagement, and delivery of ROI.
Equality Advocate of the Year Award
This award is reserved for a male individual who has gone above and beyond to promote gender equality and encourage more female leaders. They will need to have proven that they have created some form of movement around gender equality and evidence of advocating flexible working environments that enables mothers to return to work. This individual will have demonstrated that they have sought to think bigger than their own company to spear head the need for change in the wider marketing industry. The judges will be looking for not only evidence of this individual creating a voice and movement that has gathered momentum, but also tangible evidence that they have implemented change in their own business.
The Customer Experience Award
The Customer Experience award recognises the individual who is inspiring, encouraging and effecting change in her and her clients’ businesses, such that ‘human-centricity’ has become possible, successful and is showing demonstrable results through the course of the last 12 months.
This year we also welcome applications from behavioural experts (client-side, agency/freelance). We recognise the crucial importance of behavioural sciences in building strong, effective, and long-lasting brand and marketing strategies and campaigns.
WiM Storyteller of the Year Award
This award will be given to a female or male writer or broadcaster, who has covered the marketing industry with intelligence, thoroughness and excellence. This award recognises individuals who are successfully changing the narrative and helping the industry understand key issues,whether through podcasting,interviews,features or news.
This award is not just for journalist it will be given to all writers and broadcasters making an impact. It will recognise people who have successfully addressed issues of gender discrimination or any other kind of discrimination and challenges that women or minority groups face, or who have championed the successes of women through their work.
The Industry Shaper Award
The Industry Shapers award recognises individuals changing what marketing means at an industry level. Individuals at the leading edge of Marketing Technology – they are working in areas of technology impacting the marketing industry – AI,VR,AR including the marketing application of Blockchain, Martech, building Fintech brands and driving digital change. They are recognised as at the cross-section between marketing and technology.
The PR Communicator of the Year Award
This category has been created to recognise the important role of communications highlighted by the global pandemic. This award recognises female PR specialists – agency and client side. Judges will be seeking evidence of impactful campaigns,personal and professional achievements, leadership and contribution to the advancement and promotion of the wider PR/communications industry
The Marketing Scientist Award
This award will recognise a female lead from the education sector – this can include further and higher education, public and private providers.
The winner is one who has led a teaching initiative or research project that demonstrates innovative approaches to marketing education through the delivery of a new marketing course or curriculum. Submissions must tell the story of enhancing and transforming student experience and outcomes through the development of learning activities and resources and creating effective learning environments that promote participation in marketing education and equality of opportunity for learners.
The WiM Copywriting Award – supported by Vikki Ross for #copywritersunite
This category celebrates copywriting. It’s open to female copywriters of all levels and all disciplines, and all ways of working: as a freelancer or consultant, in an agency or in-house.The award recognises the craft of copywriting. The winner will be awarded for their way with words: words that lean on effective copywriting techniques to be clear, creative, concise and compelling.
Entries should be copy written for a client and produced in the last year. On packaging, on billboards or online. In print, in social or internal comms. A tiny banner ad or a huge campaign. A brand book or tone of voice guidelines.
Particular consideration will be given to copywriters who have created a campaign or initiative, either independently or for a client, that uses the power of words to empower women, encourage equality or fight gender discrimination.
The Special Award for Outstanding Contribution to Marketing (Brand & Agency)
This award will be given to a female who has contributed significantly to marketing in recent years, as a result of the ground-breaking work they have achieved for their own brand or organisation or for the industry as a whole.
This will be someone who inspires greatness, who challenges the norms of marketing, is passionate about the development of women within the industry and whose energy and commitment has delivered outstanding results.
The WiM Company Award
This award recognises an organisation that actively supports the development and establishment of women in senior marketing leadership roles and demonstrates best practices in diversity and inclusion throughout their organisation.
The organisations nominated can range from commercial businesses to agencies to academia.
The winning organisation needs to demonstrate that it has women in senior leadership roles along with a clear strategy and plan to increase that number. The organisation also needs to demonstrate its journey towards inclusion and diversity, drawing inspiration from the WiM Inclusion Charter with the aspirational ethos of #WeWill – a willingness to join the inclusion journey and share best practice, and through coming together we can succeed and challenge the status quo.
This award is not entered for, organisations will be nominated by a panel of industry experts.