The awards are judged by an esteemed panel of industry leaders and experts, the judging is a rigorous two-stage process including pre-scoring to determine shortlists and a judging meeting where entries are discussed and evaluated in detail to decide the winning entries.
From a transparency perspective, we may video aspects of the judging session to show on the evening and give entrants an insight into why a winning entry was chosen.
Become a Judge Previous Judges
Judges
Raj Basi | Digital Content and Engagement Manager | Harrods
Raj is a strategic storyteller working in the Employee Experience team at Harrods. With over five years experience in digital content, and an insatiable appetite for bringing the employee voice to life, Raj knows how to use the mechanics of content to drive a sense of connection, engagement and belonging. Whether it’s tactically driving people-led experiences or putting her heart into small touches, everything she does is to support Harrods’ ambition to create a human and memorable employee and candidate experience.
Heather Bowen | Head of UK Content Partnerships | Twitter
ITV, Disney, Bloomberg and more - Heather works closely with some of the most premium content partners in the world, whilst leading Twitter UK's content partnerships team. She describes her team as "a bit like Maya Jama" because like the Love Island host, they create unforgettable pairings by combining clients' ads with high-quality content on Twitter. Prior to Twitter she was part of the digital team at The Daily Mirror that specialised in creating content for online and social media engagement.
Sarah Cook | Group Head of Social Media and Content Strategy | Legal & General
Sarah has worked in communications for over 15 years: both in-house and for agencies. She is currently responsible for brand campaigns and content in the Group brand team at Legal & General. Before this, she worked at an international law firm, leading their social media strategy and she started her career as a communications consultant, working at PR agencies in London.
Rachael Courtney | Senior Social Marketing Lead | Virgin Media
Rachael has worked in PR & Events for over 17 years, with 15 years running Social Media for big brands. Previous roles have included heading up social at Cineworld and Three, where she was responsible for a number of award-winning social campaigns. Rachael now leads the social strategy and team at Virgin Media.
Paris de Reuck | Content and Community Strategist
Paris has worked in social media and SEO for thirteen years, with eight years spent heading social media, influencers and editorial teams at MediaCom and OMD. Paris now works directly with companies and startups helping them find creative ways to grow through social media advertising, content and influencer marketing.
Lyndsey Evans | FOUNDER | COLLABORATIVE FOLKS
Lyndsey runs the PR & communications freelance network, Collaborative Folks, which she launched after 20 years working in both inhouse and agency marketing communications roles, spanning PR, content marketing and brand strategy. Prior to this she headed up comms at retailers AO.com and Iceland Foods, as well as worked at some of the north west’s biggest agencies. Lyndsey’s experience spans 70+ brands across 20 sectors and includes Bentley Motors, Gumtree, Very, Specsavers and Marks & Spencer. At AO.com, Lyndsey transformed the brand's reputation from a little-known online white goods specialist to one of the most talked about emerging online retailers over a four year period. She also introduced the company’s first PR, content and influencer team and after inheriting a decimated search profile brought the business' search rankings back to page 1 from page 100 following a Google penalty. Lyndsey has won many industry awards and has been named a top 50 in-house communicator in the north.
Harry Foges | Head of Content
Harry has 20 years’ experience working in content marketing. He began his career as a football journalist before taking up content leadership positions at Orange, BT (Sport) and Zoopla. His work has won a number of industry awards.
Michelle Gledhill | EMPLOYABILITY LEAD DEPARTMENT OF MARKETING, RETAIL & TOURISM | Manchester Metropolitan University
Dr Michelle Gledhill is a specialist in in advertising, branding and media. My former position (2010 to 2022) as Programme Leader for MSc Creative Advertising Strategy combined my expertise in strategic thinking when working on live briefs with brands such as Manchester City, the Happy Linen Company and Rockstar Spirits, with my passion for developing and nurturing student talent in the Manchester and across the UK. This has led to a new role where I am the Marketing Retail and Tourism Employability Lead. She will be working with agencies and businesses to enhance the career prospects of MRT students. Her fascination for branding led her to complete a unique doctoral thesis on how brands are processed whilst playing videogames. She is a highly experienced marketer, Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), CIM Senior Examiner and HE Examiner.
Dee Goldstraw | Senior lecturer | Manchester Metropolitan University
A senior lecturer in marketing and digital communications at Manchester Metropolitan University, Dee specialist area is content marketing, where she teaches across a number of content strategy units. Reading for her PhD has taken her research into the area of exploring online influencers, in particular on Instagram, and their impact on women. A PR professional for more than 15 years, Dee has worked in a mixture of PR, digital marketing and events agencies across the north of the UK as well as working freelance.
Veronika Höller | Global Senior SEO Manager | CompuGroup Medical
Veronika is a Global Senior SEO-Manager and has worked in SEO and PPC marketing for over 14 years. She started as a copywriter and PPC Manager in a little Ads Agency. She has continuously developed herself further into the direction of SEO. Over the years, she has worked as a digital marketing manager in agencies and international companies, including CompuGroup where she is now. International SEO and PPC Strategies are Top of her priority list. She views SEO as a whole puzzle and not just individual sub-areas, hence why she trained herself in all areas – content, technology, PPC, SMM and UX. Today she spreads her knowledge as a speaker on the stages of international digital marketing conferences such as BrightonSEO, SMX advanced, International Search Summit etc. For her all digital marketing channels have to be united to get the best of your website.
John Jones | Corporate Partner | Beever and Struthers
John leads Beever and Struthers' Corporate Team, having been made a Partner in 1999. Beever and Struthers is an award-winning firm of Chartered Accountants and Business Advisors in Manchester, Blackburn and London, and currently rank in the Top 50 firms nationally and Top 10 firms in the North West. John is Vice President of the Manchester Business Group of the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce. He was Chairman of Pro-Manchester from 2014 - 2015.
Kenon Man | Deputy Director of Marketing | University of Nottingham
Kenon has over 10 years experience of creating and producing award winning content in the higher education sector. He is Deputy Director of Marketing at University of Nottingham, but started out in Arts marketing when creating social media content was considered a risky thing to do. Kenon is keen to get more diversity into the mar-comms industry and he’s been awarded a place on the BME Pros Xec leadership course, the first leadership scheme for UK-based Black, Asian, Mixed Race and Ethnic Minority (BME) PR and comms pros.
Natalie Messingham | Social Media Lead | Marks & Spencer
Natalie started her marketing journey on the graduate scheme at Tesco, where she worked across community marketing launching the Farm to Fork project, colleague insight, local marketing and then in the social media and digital content team. She then joined Dixons Carphone to transform the Carphone Warehouse and Currys channels, launching some epic collaborations including 'Big Narstie and the Samsung S9' launch. Natalie is now leading social media for M&S Food, which involves driving social expertise across M&S, developing their strategy for each of their core channels, and creating engaging social-first content for M&S’s 8m+ followers. She's excited to see the creativity and stepping outside of the box with this year's awards entries.
Rejoice Ojiaku | SEO Account Manager | SEO Sherpa
Rejoice Ojiaku is an SEO Specialist & Content Strategist, as well as the Co-Founder of B-DigitalUK – a platform for showcasing and empowering black talent in the UK digital marketing scene. Her expertise lies in SEO, Diversity and inclusion, all bolstered by strong personal branding both online and offline.
Tiago Perdigão | CEO | Fractal Mind
Tiago is an experienced Manager with +25 years of experience in the areas of marketing, sales and retail, having worked in companies such as adidas, Jeronimo Martins, Sonae and FNAC. He has worked for adidas in several Marketing roles in Europe and the MENA, where he received many media, activation and retail awards. He also as been part of several jury panels in marketing awards events on the region. Always pioneering in the use of new technologies to the business world, he took on gamification as his latest challenge in 2017, currently leading Gamification startups in both Portugal and the UK. He achieved is Bachelors in Management in Portugal, followed by an MBA with Marketing focus in the UK. More recently he concluded a Post-Graduation Diploma in Retail Management and another in Arts Markets and Collections. He is also a long time Member of the CIM (MCIM) and (believe it or not!) a Chartered Accountant.
Will Piper | Head of Content | Aston Martin F1 Team
Will is an award-winning storyteller with a proven record of managing visual and written content that engages, retains and grows audiences through digital strategy, creative originality and data-led insight. As Head of Content for Aston Martin Formula One Team, Will determines the overarching content and channel strategy and delivers the brand and audience strategies across all digital and physical touchpoints. Prior to working in Formula One, Will spent a number of years working in football. At Chelsea FC, Will helped the team to win Best Digital Marketing at the Marketing Society Brave Awards in 2020, for the growth and product development of The 5th Stand, as well as Best Digital Content at the SportsPro Media Awards for a mini-documentary series produced in-house that storied the return of Frank Lampard as manager. Will has had work nominated for awards at both Aston Martin F1 and West Ham United and returns as a judge for the UK Content Awards having also been on the panel in 2022.
Plamen Popov | Head of Organic Growth | Acronis Global
Plamen Popov is an experienced digital marketer & SEO Expert with history of working for internationally renowned brands. He currently is working as Senior SEO Lead in Acronis, world leader in cyber protection & data security company. Plamen joined last year from the marketing team of Management Financial Group, where he lead global marketing strategies for various fin-tech brands inside the holding. Plamen has a genuine interest in marketing and technology and that drives his experience through out consulting start up companies and leading teams in enterprise brands exploring various aspects of marketing activities including PPC, Social Media, Display, Programmatic, App Marketing and SEO. His passion for Search Marketing & SEO always drives him to learn and explore new possibilities of creating better user experiences and results.
Ric Rodriguez | Co-Founder & Chief Growth Officer | Finsu
Ric Rodriguez is an accomplished marketing and growth leader. Ric is Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer at Finsu, the sustainable fashion marketplace, taking the compromise out of conscious shopping. Ric is driven and his career to date speaks to his ambition - most recently holding a senior strategy role at Vashi, the fine jewellery disruptor - where he built the digital marketing team from the ground-up, launched the Covent Garden flagship store and Innovation Centre and established an accredited approach to ESG. Prior to this, Ric held an evangelist role at the marketing technology company, Yext, where he supported sales and product teams in building new propositions for customers, including delivering an new approach for qualifying deals during the beginning of the Covid-19, which was adopted across EMEA - as well as regularly representing the NYSE-listed firm as an industry expert at events across Europe. Ric has also held significant roles in agency-side positions, at iProspect, where he lead accounts for leading brands such as Santander and Post Office; at Croud, where he was seconded into IWG’s marketing organisation to deliver the company’s digital growth across 110+ markets - work for which he won an industry award. Ric is often invited to speak at industry conferences and is a regular award judge. He has twice been a co-author for the Amazon-Bestselling “Mastering In-House SEO”.
James Simpson | Owner | Copper Candle
James Simpson is the owner of Copper Candle, a live events XR studio. James is a creative technologist, passionate about the use of technology in creating theatre and live entertainment. His specialism and PhD research is pre-visualisation, particularly using XR technology. James has worked with the Royal Opera House, Royal Shakespeare Company, and has worked on productions including Miss Saigon, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat, &Juliet and the Commonwealth Games Ceremonies. Alongside visualisation, James creates XR location-based experiences and virtual reality theatre.
Hannah Smith | Founder | Worderist
Hannah Smith spent 7 years working in offline marketing (they just called it ‘marketing’ back then) until her fairy godmother told her that the internet was the future. Not one to ignore such sage advice, she made the switch to online marketing in 2007. Over a five and half year period at Distilled, she was part of the creative team which delivered over 14,000 pieces of linked coverage. Then, for close to three years, she led the creative and PR team at Verve Search. In that time she was responsible for launching more than 150 creative content pieces which generated over 8,250 pieces of linked coverage. Her work for clients has won multiple awards, and she’s spoken at numerous conferences including MozCon, SMX, SearchLove, and BrightonSEO. In 2019 she founded Worderist.com offering consultancy, coaching, training, and ongoing support to help agency-side and in house creative teams make content which delivers results.
Ida Solem | Partner and Content Advisor | Takk for sist
Ida is a partner and content creator in her own content agency called Takk for sist. With more than 10 years of Social Media experience, Ida has worked with both organic and paid content with multiple target groups worldwide. Ida started her career working in the educational system before moving towards a more sustainable market, targeting NGO's and UNHCR through her employment at solar company BRIGHT Products. Now, she runs her own agency together with her partner Sara Strand, where they operate clients' social media accounts and produces social media strategies, among other content tasks.
Bianca Spada | International Social Media Marketing | Facebook
Bianca is a global digital strategy expert with 10 years experience of delivering successful digital strategies and global campaigns in some of the world’s leading and cutting edge companies. She is an expert in consolidating and creating brand new social strategies to significantly increase the visibility of brands online. Bianca has a proven record of radically turning around performance and generating 3-figure growth within 12 months of working in a company.
Alison Traboulsi | Social Media Editor | Direct Line Group
With over 12 years in social media marketing, Alison started at Direct Line Group (DLG) in August 2017 as Social Media Editor working across DLG’s brands including Green Flag, Direct Line, Churchill and Privilege. Before DLG, Alison spent six years at lastminute.com running its European social media platforms delivering audience-first content to maintain brand awareness, increase hotel, theatre and holiday sales and drive traffic to their blogs. During her tenure she was directly responsible for numerous award wins, including The Drum Social Buzz awards for a partnership with The X Factor. A Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned social media expert and regular industry commentator, Alison has a BA (Hons) in Information and Media, a certificate in Digital Marketing run by the Institute of Direct Marketing and brand experience spanning Eurostar, Hed Kandi, Intercontinental Hotels, Barclays and Disney.
Anita Veszeli | Global Head of Social Engagement & Advocacy | Ericsson
Anita is the Global Head of Social Engagement & Advocacy at Ericsson, where she has been championing social-first thinking since 2013. Having amassed more than 15 years’ experience in B2B marketing and communication, and a decade in social media across various roles, she currently enjoys a unique position with oversight of all social media, employee advocacy and influencer marketing across Ericsson’s global business.