FMBE Awards 2025 – presented 29th January 2026 at Troxy London.
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Highlights – in pictures – by Frank Wainwright, Awards Director. With thanks to our sponsors, who are credited in the details below. Event Photos by Aniseed.
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FMBE Awards celebrated its Past, Present and Future at Troxy London 29th January 2026 with a Time Travel themed event.
The venue proved to be a popular one to return to this year delivering its immersive art deco class to our event. We were last at Troxy in 2018.
Our Past, Present and Future presenter was actor, ‘amateur’ archeologist, historian, raconteur and author Sir Tony Robinson, famed for delvering Baldrick’s cunning plans to Rowan Atkinson as Blackadder and deciphering the past in Time Team. Tony is still telling his tales to packed theatres globally and has just published the first in a trilogy of historical novels, The House of Wolf.
Tony presented alongside a cast of animated characters inspired by TV Time Travel programmes including Blackadder and Dr Who. That’s queenie in the picture above. The screen animations, live feed to screen from the room and fan cam moments were delivered by the exceptional team at Innovate Live.
The characters were voiced by Darren Andrews – apart from Queenie who was our very own Sam Robbins. Sam completed her 17th year producing FMBE Awards . Here I am with Sam enjoing a cocktail.
So, those cocktails – Blood Orange Gin and Tonic at reception, bookended by Negronis with dessert. They were the work of the wonderful Nicholson, who took over our reception bar. Though the usual sparkling wine was also available the cockails were the overwhelming choice. Nichiolson also came to the event with a team of very engaging brand ambassadors.
Nicholson was established in 1736, and today is reimagined in the ready-mixed cocktail space. Their cocktails on tap are especially convenient, one part of the reseon that Nicholson is an official supplier to Chelsea Football Club.
An FMBE welcome
FMBE brings elements for FMBE campaigns into the room, starting just inside the door with our table plans displayed on the ready to go sampling units that belong to lead sponsor SpaceandPeople. There’s more on SpaceandPeople below.
Of course we also celebrate brand ambassadors. The staff hosts from Elevate Global were with us doing their impeccable work from the word go for the fourth year. We would be at such as loss without team Elevate. They completely ‘get’ our event and balance off a large list of tasks faultlessly and joyfully. This year they dressed to theme… ta da!
That’s the bulk of ther team on the glamorous Troxy steps.
The Tom Baker in the middle (above) is team leader Moses, who is just magical at handling the moments where we are solving a guest issue.
In the picture above, Joe Sheppard, UK MD, who also presents our Campaign of the Year Award and Maggie who has been an electric part of our stage predsentation team for 3 years.
Reception Games
Much fun was had at the Reception courtesy of sponsor Retailwise who created a Dr Who themed quiz leaderboard with screens and tech supplied by One World Rental. I was the quizmaster as I scripted some event and brand questions based on this year’s attendees, companies and agencies. We’re working on getting you an online version.
There are some very cool player avatars too. Here’s mine.
After curating those questions I also curated the photos for our Who’s Who wall of past heroes and landmark campaigns built for me by the epic Wasserman team.
The photo wall was emotional for me to see, the repuatations and achievemements built and celebrated through 21 years of FMBE are quite astonishing. The wall we made included work and wins from around 80% of this year’s attendees, remarkable consistency that shows the power of success cycles. The 20% are the Rising Stars, people we will see grow with us in years to come.
Later the wall saw some lovely moments as poeple reunited in front of their former selves
The Whos’ Who wall also provided a backdrop to interviews by Rowan – who came with the Innovate Live team – about favourite FMBE moments and future plans.
A final core part of the welcome party saw three caricaturists teamed together by the engaging Sassy Steve capturing some timeless poses.
Dinner was then served and looking after us, Boulevard Events. I dined in the main room for the first tme in a few years and found the service team a delight. I had the very tasty slow cooked short rib of beef and heard that the portobello mushroom and spinach wellington was also a cheffy success.
Boulevard also kepts the evening swinging along on schedule – quite a challenge as FMBE guests do take off around each other’s tables for ‘long time no sees’.
Dinner was also the guests first chance to see this year’s magazine – very kindly sponsored by ABM Experience Solutions.
There have been a few requests for my annual industry address. Also the magazine covered news highlights from 2025 featuring award winners and sponsors!
Here is the full PDF version.
My industry address tells of the clinet relationships that have helped prove the value of FMBE Awards through the years.
That was also why I chose to present the two special awards for ongoing client relationships myself.
The FM winner, CPM and Mars Wrigley have been together for 40 years. FMBE is proudly one fo the few awards globally that Mars Wrigley signs off for award entry, doing so based on our client judging system and our discretion.
The BE winner, We Are Collider and Waitrose work their amazing event each year at Tobacco Dock, a venue that we helped launch to the FMBE Sector with our Symposium there ten years ago. The WAC/Waitrose team have a landmark food and drink festival now that is a must attend every year.
Category Sponsors
Amongst our category sponsors are three that have collectively presented more than 50 awards on our stage – Steve Grimes, Teamhaven, Nigel Cruttendon, Movista and Jonny Lamb, Promologistics. (pictured in sequence below)
FMBE was also trusted by regular sponsor Landsec to help launch two property brands at the event as the team took to the stage to present two of our immersive event categories – showcasing Spotlight by Landsec and Piccadilly Lights The Venue.
We also saw the aforementioned Retailwise present THREE FMBE categories. The energy Retailwise and BEst Connected winning presenter Mark Waddington brings to the awards is exceptional.
Lead sponsor SpaceandPeople’s Andrew Bodwick presented the £25,000 value Network Rail prize to the roadshow winner Zeal Creative and Kellanova’s Cheez-IT and I was able to intercept him for a bit of our own industry recognoition, the Brand Enagament Award. SpaceandPeople has facilitated more brand events than anyone else in our 21 year history and this award put the spotlight on their tireless team of industry champions.
That wasn’t the only nostalgic moment of the night as we celebtated the 16 most successful FMBE aegncies with Blue Plaques commending their achievements across our first 21 years.
These are the 16 recipients: ABM Experience Solutions, Blue Square, Circle Agency, CPM, Field Sales Solutions, Fizz Experience, Gekko Group, Logobrand, N2O, PrettyGreen, Powerforce, PRL, RPM, Smollan, TRO and Wasserman.
Of course Andrew Bodwick took to the stage one last time for Agency of the Year, here presenting the BE agency accolade to Zeal Creative, first timers at FMBE and already a core part of the family. Rising Star or Risen? You decide! (Rising Star nominations have been extended for another week to 10th Feb)
Some final notes
A thank you to our futuristic dancers from Vegas…
and a very special thankyou to the incredible No Limit Street Band who have become industry favourites – last seen with Pepsico – and who put in an incredible shift at FMBE. Great to have them back!
And finally finally…
Spot the difference in the pictures below… When the client turns your campaign into the product and you can buy youselves at B&M, that’s sweet success. Thanks for the table gifts, LINK Communication!
