As advertisers gear up for more stand out news brand ad campaigns in 2024, Newsworks communications manager Lewis Boulton reviews the highlights from the 2023 Newsworks Awards in his column for INMA
I’m convinced it’s a nationwide British tradition that everyone has their own signs that Christmas is almost here: the first time they hear the smooth synths of Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’, maybe? The first time ‘Love, Actually’ makes its way onto the Saturday night TV schedules?
In my family when I was a kid, it used to be when trailers for ‘The X Factor’ started showing up — normally back in August! However, since starting at Newsworks, there’s a new fixture that always gets me in the festive spirit: our annual Newsworks Awards.
Every year, we celebrate the very best multi-platform news brand advertising from the last 12 months, whether that’s timely tactical or clever contextual ads, brilliantly effective campaigns or creative with a conscience.
We also honour rising agency stars for their brilliant work championing the use of news brands in media plans. Additionally, we give the ultimate kudos to an advertiser of the year consistently using news publishers to execute stand-out campaigns.
In 2023, we saw a particularly strong trend of fantastic purpose-led campaigns that made a real impact for news brands’ readers and advertisers’ customers. Highlights included a crusade that took International Women’s Day all the way to the House of Commons, a nation-wide campaign helping readers take better care of their health, and a fight to save a beloved British institution from the threat of takeaway pizza.
But, as always, we also saw some creative masterpieces that made the most of format, context, and good timing to land impactful campaigns, catching the eyes of both readers and our judges.
Read Lewis’s full story on INMA here.
