Agencies including OMD UK, EssenceMediacom, Spark Foundry and Zenith UK were honoured at Newsworks’ annual awards, celebrating the very best in multi-platform news brand advertising
Bicycle London took home the coveted Chair’s Award for its stand out Sarson’s cover wrap rallying readers to help save the great British chip shop.
Ross Sergeant, Allwyn global head of media and chair of judges, commented: “It’s been fantastic to chair such a competitive Newsworks Awards this year. The standard of entries has been outstanding and all our winners should be immensely proud.
“Bicycle London and Sarson’s fight to save our chip shops particularly stood out to me for cleverly using the news brand format to its fullest. The result was a brilliantly impactful campaign, which amplified an issue close to readers’ hearts — a worthy winner of the Chair’s Award.”
Meanwhile, Lidl took home advertiser of the year for their consistent dedication to producing innovative and effective news brand campaigns via its agency OMD UK. Both best content partnership and most effective campaign went to EssenceMediacom and The Pharm for their work on Boots’ nationwide health check campaign.
Spark Foundry also secured two awards for two separate campaigns with Asda. Its clever ‘Romaine calm’ creative won best tactical ad, while best display was won by its 2022 Christmas campaign featuring Will Farrell’s Buddy the Elf.
Zenith UK took home best social impact campaign for its International Women’s Day work with Scottish Widows highlighting the pension gender pay gap. Publicis Media and Aviva were honoured in the best contextual campaign category for clever placement around news brand puzzles sections.
Elsewhere, 2023’s rising star of the year award was won by Wavemaker content director Molly Exley-Kidd for her outstanding achievements so far in promoting ambitious, effective news brand advertising within her agency.
Speaking on judging day, Lauren Raymond, UM managing partner — strategy & audiences, said: “It’s been really inspiring, a fantastic day and an amazing celebration of news media.
“It’s been a good refresher for lots of us to see all the ways you can use news brands and how the best advertisers are really embracing that platform.”
Newsworks CEO Jo Allan commented: “We’ve seen outstanding examples of effective and collaborative multiplatform campaigns this year, demonstrating the power of news brands in all their forms: from impactful print and digital display to brand partnerships and ever-evolving video and podcast formats.
“Congratulations to all those whose work was recognised this year.”
See our full list of winners and highly commended campaigns below. Case studies for each can be found here.
2023 winners
Best display campaign
Winner: Asda, ‘Have your Elf a Merry Christmas’, Spark Foundry
Highly commended: GambleAware, Let’s Open Up About Gambling, OmniGOV @ MG OMD
Best content partnership
Winner: Boots, Project You, Health Check Campaign, EssenceMediacom & The Pharm
Highly commended: Halifax, Who know banks could do ‘community’?, Zenith UK
Best tactical ad
Winner: Asda, Tactical Ads, Spark Foundry
Highly commended: Burger King, (Burger) King’s Coronation, iProspect
Best contextual campaign
Winner: Aviva, Using innovative contexts to bring to life ‘solving financial puzzles’, Publicis Media
Highly commended: Sanofi – Buscopan, Taking a high fashion approach to irritable bowel syndrome, Hearts & Science
Most effective campaign
Winner: Boots, Project You, Health Check Campaign, EssenceMediacom & The Pharm
Highly commended: Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), The DEC Turkey/Syria Earthquake Appeal: the power of news media in an emergency, JAA Media
Best social impact campaign
Winner: Scottish Widows, How a news brands crusade got all the way to Rishi Sunak, Zenith UK
Rising agency star of the year
Winner: Molly Exley-Kidd, Wavemaker UK
Highly commended: Meghan Gale, Spark Foundry
Advertiser of the year
Winner: Lidl, OMD UK
Chair’s Award
Winner: Sarson’s, Fryday, Bicycle London
