One of the biggest industry events in marketing news took place last night as the Marketing Society held its 2010 Awards ceremony.

The Marketing Society is a cross-sector, not-for-profit organisation that acts as a network for senior marketers in the UK as well as a best-practice advocate for the industry. Each year the society’s senior members judge the advertising campaigns across each medium, recognising the best for innovativeness and driving growth to their clients.

This year the top award was given to prestige supermarket chain Waitrose. The ‘Grand Prix’ award was given to the company for the launch of its budget range, ‘Essential Waitrose’. It is believe that this line of common household goods helped the company defy the dire predictions made about its sales during the recession, turning predicted losses into an 11% sales increase over 2009.

Containing more than 1,400 products, the Essential Waitrose line was praised for maintaining the company’s upmarket brand whilst appealing to the cash-conscious consumer during the economic downturn.

Other winners included Marks & Spencer, which netted two awards related to its promotion of sustainable consumer goods; the ‘Best Leading Edge Thinking’ award and the ‘Marketing for Sustainable Consumption’. 

Several of the awards were given to non-commercial campaigns. For example, the Government’s obesity campaign, Change4Life, won the award for ‘New Brand or Business’, whilst the ‘Customer Insight’ award was given to NHS Blood and Transplant. The central ‘Not for Profit Marketing’ award, the only one specifically aimed at this sector, was awarded to the Keep Britain Tidy campaign.

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