Recognizing world class achievements from marketing and communications functions worldwide
Recognizing world class achievements from marketing and communications functions worldwide
Now in its 14th year, the Gartner Marketing and Communications Awards are a global, annual, prestigious recognition program that recognizes marketing and communications excellence around the globe. Entries are open, so get some inspiration from the 2023 winners, and start your entry now.
Our Awards reward and recognize Marketing and Communications professionals and teams that have achieved real, measurable business outcomes in their organizations.
Winners will be able to showcase their great work via a number of potential channels, including: live presentations; winners’ webinar; profiled case studies; podcast interviews; and a winners video showcase on awards' website. Winning an Award has helped previous winners to:
*The Awards are open to all marketing and/or communications leaders and practitioners within a business. We do not accept entries from vendors promoting their own products, or consultancies who have delivered consultancy engagements in marketing and communications for clients.
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There's a category for every initiative! Our 2024 categories fall in to two focus areas: Content and Campaign Excellence and Leadership and Functional Excellence. It takes exceptional individuals and teams to deliver game-changing Marketing and Communication which is why our Awards program recognizes so many aspects of your work.
Click on each category below for a brief overview, then view our category guide for full details.
Focus Area: Leadership and Functional Excellence
Winning entries may include approaches that demonstrate how they have:
Successfully repositioned marketing from being a reactive order taker to a proactive business partner.
Successfully led or contributed to enterprise-wide projects or initiatives that demonstrably supported enterprise goals.
Successfully managed Marketing through adversity, such as budget cuts, talent challenges or macroeconomic pressures.
Successfully built or rebuilt a marketing function from the ground up.
Successfully spearheaded growth or innovation initiatives that introduced capabilities new to the organization, industry or customers with demonstrable positive impact.
Focus Area: Leadership and Functional Excellence
Winning entries may include approaches that demonstrate how they have:
Created and rolled out new corporate narratives and/or brand narratives.
Repositioned or refreshed corporate and/or product brand(s)
Redefined organizational brand architecture
Measured and/or reported on brand and/or reputation health
Demonstrated the value and impact of brand investments to internal stakeholders
Delivered new and salient brand experiences that change audience perspectives
Focus Area: Content and Campaign Excellence
Winning entries may include approaches that demonstrate how they have:
Partnered effectively with cross-functional leaders, executive leaders and managers by clearly defining respective roles during various stages of change management
Effectively tracked change impacts and acceptance to recognize emerging risks and course-correct communication plans
Supported leaders and managers in creating clear and compelling communication about organizational transformation, desired culture or behavior change
Sensitively handled existing change fatigue, information overload and/or fear of new technology
Focus Area: Leadership and Functional Excellence
Winning entries may include approaches that demonstrate how they have:
Created measurement plans of any altitude (function- or project-level) that use metrics and measurement methods tailored to desired audience and/or business outcomes
Collaborated with business partners to develop outcomes-focused metrics and/or measurement methods for marketing or communications projects
Created dashboards or reports that make it easy for teams to summarize their function’s/project’s performance on key metrics
Created reports that clearly outline to leaders how Communications has supported key business outcomes
Focus Area: Leadership and Functional Excellence
Winning entries may include approaches that demonstrate the above impact by how they have:
Established criteria for determining when/if to collaborate at all
Enabled clarity and alignment of resource contributions (over time)
Employed governance tactics that keep initiatives moving forward, faster
Embedded agility with respect to altering resource commitments when necessary
Focus Area: Leadership and Functional Excellence
Winning entries may include approaches that demonstrate how they are:
Building compelling experiences that deepen customer engagement by connecting channels
Developing sophisticated methods of sensing and proactively responding to customer needs
Applying automated personalization and/or next-best action design
Coordinating between multiple teams to facilitate a cohesive customer journey
Focus Area: Content and Campaign Excellence
Winning entries may include approaches that demonstrate how they have:
Executed a well-designed strategy that resulted in high impact content across channels
Supported dynamic, modular content experiences that resonate across the customer journey
Scaled content through advanced, agile content operations
Differentiated content that had a measurable impact on the organization
Focus Area: Leadership and Functional Excellence
Winning entries may include approaches that demonstrate how they have:
Created and implemented a strategic workforce plan for marketing and/or communications
Upskilled, trained, and planned career paths of internal marketing and/or communications teams
Implemented programs focused on shared purpose, collaboration, and deeper connections between team members
Implemented programs targeted to marketing and communications employees’ personal growth and well-being
Implemented flexible work initiatives - including flexibility in location, work hours, and autonomy
Implemented Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives specific to marketing and communications
Focus Area: Leadership and Functional Excellence
Winning entries may include approaches that demonstrate:
Cross-functional collaboration with business and data partners that deliver greater impact through use cases. Use cases which depend on customer and marketing data to deliver business outcomes.
Progressive success in leveraging data to support new marketing use cases or increase the effectiveness of existing use cases.
Effective customer analytics capabilities deployed at scale, for example personalization across channels including service, or customer value metrics in predictive modeling . B2B lead, prospect and customer examples are encouraged and welcome .
Programs to increase marketing’s usage of marketing analytics that delivered verifiable outcomes.
Programs of measurement that prove marketing’s impact on business outcomes. For example, use of marketing analytics methodologies to demonstrate marketing’s impact, such as marketing mix modeling, experimentation and attribution.
Operational performance measures that drive continuous improvement (good work management systems/processes) - measures that help us drive towards improved operational efficiency.
Focus Area: Leadership and Functional Excellence
Winning entries may include approaches that demonstrate the following:
Small idea: Changes and initiatives of modest resource commitment and outlay. For the purposes of this award, small ideas are deemed as taking ~1-4 months from idea to execution and fewer than ~4 in-house FTEs to execute.
Big impact: Demonstrated impact on audience attitudes and behaviors, as well as organizational outcomes. For the purposes of demonstrating the impact of your idea, ensure that you clearly articulate the business-impact that the work had on your organization.
Focus Area: Content and Campaign Excellence
Winning entries may include approaches that demonstrate how they have:
Effectively reached and equitably engaged non-wired employee segments (e.g., those on the road or in a facility without constant access to digital messages) as a part of a hybrid workforce (i.e., employees with different onsite/remote statuses)
Leveraged managers as employees’ preferred channel of communication to ensure a consistent, positive employee experience
Implemented ambassadorship or advocacy programs (e.g., for change, culture, brand, etc.) to align employees with the organization’s vision
Effectively partnered with HR or other internal support functions to manage enterprise communication channels, platforms and tools (including AI-enabled tools)
Sparked excitement among employees for working with new technology (i.e., working with “robocolleagues” or “cobots”)
Focus Area: Content and Campaign Excellence
Winning entries may include approaches that demonstrate how they have:
Created or refreshed your ESG, Sustainability, or DEI communications strategy that has had a tangible impact on your organization
Found innovative ways to use ESG, Sustainability, or DEI communications to connect with and influence your most important audiences
Collaboration with other teams (such as Marketing, Sales, HR, or ERM) to either help select which ESG, Sustainability, or DEI issues to engage with and/or amplify the value of those commitments.
Created highly effective reports on your ESG, sustainability, or DEI commitments and achievements. This could include either/both formal (e.g., CSRD) or informal reporting to internal and/or external audiences
Focus Area: Leadership and Functional Excellence
Winning entries may include approaches that demonstrate:
Execution of technology that has enabled innovative experiences for customers, employees or other stakeholders
Execution of technology that has demonstrated a clear return on investment for the organization and/or enabled new business opportunities
Strategic collaboration on marketing technologies between IT, CX, sales, customer service or other internal or external partners
Adaptive processes that enable progressive adoption of new technology and use cases
If you need guidance on how to write and submit your entry, or some inspiration from previous Awards Winners', then we’ve created numerous resources to get you started! Should you have any questions once you've read through the documents, please don't hesitate to email us. You can submit as many entries as you like, and all entries are FREE but be sure to align your entries with the category criteria.
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The Gartner Communications Awards is open to submissions from both clients and non-clients. You do not have to be a Gartner client to submit an entry into these Awards.
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