Manning Gottlieb OMD triumphed as Media Agency of the Year and ITV was crowned Sales Team of the Year at the 2019 Media Week Awards.
ITV featured heavily in many of the other award categories as Goodstuff Communications’ work with the broadcaster for Dunelm won two golds and the Grand Prix, while MediaCom North’s partnership with Missguided on Love Island won a gold, a silver and a bronze.
David Pemsel, chief executive of Guardian Media Group, who has just been recruited to be the next chief executive of the Premier League, won Media Leader of the Year in association with The Lighthouse Company, the specialist executive search group, in recognition of his turnaround of The Guardian publisher.
Manning Gottlieb OMD beat Initiative, MediaCom, OMD UK, PHD and the7stars to the Media Agency of the Year title.
The Omnicom shop had a strong year when it took on the government’s estimated £150m media buying account and delivered for existing clients such as John Lewis & Partners and Specsavers – both of which had campaigns that won golds for in the Media Idea categories.
ITV beat Channel 4, Digital Cinema Media, Mail Metro Media, The Guardian and Twitter to win Sales Team of the Year as the judges praised the broadcaster for investing in deeper client partnerships, in-house creative planning capabilities and online technology – despite a tough market for TV.
Andrew Stephens, co-founder of Goodstuff, and Ella Dolphin, chief executive of The Stylist Group, were co-chairs of judges for the awards, which were unveiled at a black-tie dinner for almost 1,000 guests at Grosvenor House on London’s Park Lane.
Stephens said: “Our industry is in really good shape. In fact, we’d go as far as to say it’s fighting fit. We use that term with purpose, because both agencies and owners alike are demonstrating a real fightback against the many and varied challenges laid at the media industry’s door over the past few years.”
Dolphin added: “It is clear that the transformational fightback is on. We are seeing more than just green shoots of success and this is no better illustrated than by the larger and more established agency and media owner brands that make up the bulk of our Agency and Sales Team of the Year awards this year.”
Hearst UK’s Country Living won Media Brand of the Year.
MediaCom won the most golds, collecting prizes for its work on Tesco, Direct Line and Missguided.
Wavemaker was named Best Agency Partner for the second year in a row – a special award supported by Reach, the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Daily Express and OK!, and judged by media owners.
For more details on the gold, silver and bronze winners, go to: www.mediaweekawards.co.uk
This article was originally published by Campaign.