Judges reasons for the winners

Category 1: Best Female Leader in Marketing

Agency Side: Winner – Tamara Gillan, Cherry London

This award recognizes the woman who has demonstrated notable marketing leadership over the last year. Winner, Tamara, is the founder and CEO of Cherry London – a marketing agency that employs 25 people, having been founded in 2009.

Tamara believes in the value of partnerships, and has created an agency designed to bring brands together to create rewarding relationships that increase reach, relevance and ROI!  They work for clients that include O2, Visa and PernodRicard.

Founding Cherry in 2009 was not without its challenges – growing a business in the current economic climate demands leadership, belief and energy – all of which Tamara has demonstrated. She believes that in tough times brands are looking for innovative marketing solutions that deliver a clear return and this is what she has set out to do individually and through her agency work, such as O2’s Priority Moments.

Cherry is flourishing under the leadership of Tamara, and looks set to continue to grow and deliver great solutions that work.

Client Side: Winner – Suzi Williams, BT

Suzi describes her secret to leadership as being curious and listening, seeking inspiration and insight from diverse places and people. Then building a great team and inspiring them to take risks.

Suzi has been working in brand and marketing roles for almost 20 years. She has progressively built her career, arriving at BT six years ago to lead BT’s Group Marketing & Brand role.  In this time she has brought many new ideas that have had a lasting impact; like developing the brand tone of voice and making this into a companywide programme. Over 40,000 employees have been trained and inspired by her ‘Speaking with one voice’ programme, or the ‘Difference to You programme with engineers and customer facing people’ a fundamental coaching programme to help imbed brand values in behaviour of customer advisers.

Suzi has demonstrated an extraordinary single minded approach, belief and passion for the BT brand. She has had the energy and sheer will to deliver her vision in a large complex organisation.  She has used her own brand and style of bold leadership to successfully drive innovation and new ideas across the company.

Category 2: Female Fast Track Marketer of the Year

Winner – Indeveer Tatla, ByBox

This award is in recognition of someone who has relatively short experience in marketing, six years or less, but has made a significant impact in their business – demonstrating best marketing practice with tangible results.

Inderveer Tatla is manager of New Markets for ByBox, a £40million company aiming to transform delivery services in the UK. Over the last three years she has led development of a new business-to-consumer proposition for ByBox, which was previously 100% business-to-business. Using consumer insight and strong proof of concept she secured significant board investment for the new growth venture. This service has now grown to 50,000 transactions a year. She has secured major contracts with companies like JD Williams Group and Figleaves.com, as well as securing a long term contract to install ByBox delivery lockers in every mainline station in the UK.

Demonstrating clarity of thinking, innovation and creativity, she has not been afraid to tackle difficult issues and has managed core areas to not only build marketing and communications investment and customer services, but also commercial propostion modelling, operations and project management.

The judges felt Inderveer was a worthy winner, demonstrating clear ability and initiative in an industry many of us have little awareness of, but rely on everyday.

Category 3: Best Female Marketer – Consumer

Winner – Suzi Williams, BT

This award recognises the best female marketer responsible for the most effective marketing for a consumer product or service in the commercial sector.

Suzi needed all of her leadership skills and instincts when she took on the challenge of securing and then leading the marketing sponsorship for BT for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Her first challenge was to convince the BT Board and Stakeholders that London 2012 would be a great opportunity for the BT brand.  Suzi created a vision of London 2012 sponsorship that was both inspiring, but also financially viable.  Suzi convinced key stakeholders across the business with a series of innovative activation ideas, events and partnerships – these were not without risk and four years before the games would begin.

By using iconic BT owned assets (BT Tower), to showcase TeamGB’s success, waiting until the games began to release the above the line campaign, engaging BT employees, customers and the nation with events like BT River Music, BT London Live and Olympic giveaways, by the end of the games 75% of the country recognized BT as the official communications provider for London 2012 (according to Nielsen research).

Suzie’s leadership has been one of remarkable energy, innovation and creative ideas to persuade stakeholders, inspire the marketing team and build a marketing platform for BT, way beyond the normal sponsorship parameters for an Olympic/Paralympic event.

Category 4: Best Female Marketer – Business to Business

Winner – Paula Allerton, Moorhouse Consulting

In trying to ensure Moorhouse was seen as a pre-eminent management consultancy that could deliver change management and close client relationships, Paula took on a number of challenges, namely to get the firm to be seen as experts on change and project management, to launch a tool for measuring effective change and its drivers, to provide door-opening opportunities with prospects and discussion opportunities with clients and – last but not least – to generate 10 quality pieces of media coverage.

Key to her success was engaging Moorhouse’s consultants plus her ‘campaign team’ which included an Executive Director, the research agency and the PR agency.

The return on investment was fantastic:  for a spend of £13,000, she was able to mobilize these scarce resources to deliver 12 pieces of quality coverage in The Times, CFO World, HR, People Management, PharmaTimes, Finance Director and other media not to mention the 60 shares, likes and retweets.

There were 100 pre-orders of the white paper, with 450 orders post-launch, not to mention the 30 meetings with clients and prospects booked as a result of the diagnostic Barometer.

So Paula – we think you deserve this award.  Many congratulations!

Category 5: Best Female Marketer – Not-for-Profit

Winner – Juliet Hillier, Brook – the young people’s sexual health charity

The judges chose Juliet Hillier as a result of the multi-faceted campaign strategy she not only helped create but successfully executed.  Combining consumer polling, an online e-petition, a media strategy with popular teenage magazine Bliss, a partnership with Radio 1 Newsbeat, endorsement and active digital support from boyband JLS all combined to engage and enable young people to get their voices heard by Government and the public.

Juliet’s work directly with the young people at Brook and the marketing commsagency was very demanding, doing as much in house as part of a two person team to deliver high impact on a low budget.

We think recognizing her hard-work, good strategy and the impact of the campaign makes her deserving of this award.

Congratulations Juliet!

Category 6: Special Award for Outstanding Contribution to Marketing

Agency Side: Winner – Kate Robertson, Havas/Co-founder One Young World

Kate has been a pioneer and driving force within the advertising industry for almost 30 years.  Her achievements are many not least that she is currently UK Chairwoman of Havas.  She could easily be nominated for her day to day work as she is a notable woman within the marketing industry. However the reason for her award is her role in the creation and development of One Young World.

One Young World is a programme to allow the brightest and best young people from around the world the chance to voice their concerns and opinions, and then propose their solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.   One Young World culminates in an annual forum where future leaders under 25 are brought together with the world’s leaders, business men and women, intellectuals and politicians to debate and discuss.

It has been described as both the “Most forward thinking piece of corporate social responsibility ever” and “junior davos”.

The third One Young World took place in October this year with Bill Clinton delivering the keynote.

Kate is therefore not only an extraordinary woman in marketing, a leader of the creative industries, but she has showed her influence and commitment to the next generation of global leaders.

Client Side: Winner – Elizabeth Fagon, Boots

Could anyone wish for more in their career to get to the top and be both respected and loved? The special award for outstanding contribution to marketing on the client side goes to a fabulous lady who inspires wonderful loyalty and love from those who work with her, as well as building the brand that she works for with a great vision and strategy and dogged determination. She is a science graduate and started life as a chemistry teacher, joining Boots in the early eighties. She built her career in high street retailing including ten years in a very macho high street sector, Dixons Retail Group, owners of Currys and PC World. Returning to Boots five years ago, she has rekindled Britain’s love of the brand, understood its democratic roots and created some advertising that lifts women up. Making the women of Britain feel good is a pretty noble achievement. She also inspires women of the marketing community with her involvement in and recent presidency of WACL, offering us all her wisdom and warmth. Here comes the girl…. Elizabeth Fagan.

Category 7: The Women in Marketing Company Award – The company that has most supported women in senior marketing leadership roles (a nominated award)

Winner – Burberry

The judges selected Burberry on the basis of its track record of innovation and market creation not just in London but across the globe.  Burberry is now a topical case study in what can be achieved when a company is truly market-driven and applies its brand strength successfully to build businesses in adjacent product categories.  No longer just a trench-coat company, Burberry is now profitably marketing homewares, walking sticks, jewellery and many other covetable luxury lifestyle products to which consumers around the world aspire.

By assembling a dream team – CMO Sarah Manley, chief designer Chris Bailey, CEO Angela Ahrendts – the company has turned its ambition to become a lifestyle brand into a reality.  And knowing the many challenges to be overcome in order to execute a strategy successfully around the world, the judges  know Burberry is one of the best there is and should be recognised as such.

Many congratulations!

Highly Commended – Helen Hammond, Elephant Creative

The judges thought that the concept behind Elephant Creative was inspired, addressing a key issue facing working professionals with families and competing commitments.
Based on the simple insight that commitment and professionalism are more important than hours worked or physically being in an office, Helen Hammond has created a business model for our networked, connected times.

By building a network of 21 associates based in different locations she has enabled both graduate men, but especially women, with family commitments to continue working flexibly at the level they expect with scope for development and growth. This is especially valuable to women returning from maternity leave although the company has also taken on graduates who combine freelance work with their commitment to Elephant Creative.

In a simple, but effective way the Elephant Creative business model encourages  and enables talented women to continue working in marketing and PR communications regardless of their family commitments, which the judges felt was an enormously positive economic contribution.

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