2016 – Troxy – Panto themed, with Christopher Biggins as Dame
Channel Assist kicked off with a win in sales with Panasonic, supported by a video testimonial from the MD.
GMR Marketing took the sampling prize back to the US for Miller Lite.
McCurrach won the instore category with an outstanding campaign for Kerry Cheesestrings – the campaign of the year. Success followed in professional agency management and ultimately agency of the year for McCurrach.
Gekko struck gold too with its sales demos for Karcher.
News UK was Team of the Year, with REL Field Marketing.
Amplify scored a hit with gold in sponsorship for Lavazza at Wimbledon. The entry was led by the brand.
Fusion also took a gold in sponsorship for their work with Renault, the first of many FMBE wins for the automotive sector specialist agency.
There was double gold for PrettyGreen and Lego, winning the roadshow and immersive consumer categories.
Traffik from Australia took the immersive by invitation category with the Samsung SideLiner, the lucky winner seats that slid along the sports touchline – a campaign that would also win experiential at Cannes.
Another high profile winner saw Momentum’s Tomb Raider billboard ‘Survival of the Grittiest’ which featured contestants standing on platforms in a game of ‘last one standing’.
iD won with Cornetto, a cinema experience where the wall fell away and the audience met the cast of the film ‘Two Sides’.
In a great year for experiential work, Circle won best stand for PlayStation.
Warburtons were also a winner, with an inhouse piece. Their launch of Giant Crumpets has never been bettered in product launch. The campaign lead was Mark Jones, nowadays MD of Logobrand. The Warburton’s team dressed as baker-Muppets to collect the prize and honour the campaign.
MKTG won gold with London and Partners for creating a new walking route to Excel and launching it with 20,000 teams of 4.
Indonesia’s PowerSwitch won, sampling Milo to 35,000 runners and many spectators at the Jakarta 10K.
MKTG landed the brand experience agency of the year award.
2017 – Troxy – with Craig Charles in sci-fi mode
The outstanding sales campaign winner was FMI with Electric Ireland.
Gekko notched up another gold in the demo category, this time with Grundig.
Field Sales Solutions took gold in Tactical with innocent and also silver in Operations with The Health Lottery. News unveiled for Agency of the Year candidacy saw Field Sales Solutions celebrating the win of one of the largest field team contracts, P&G and this carried them to a first Agency of the Year success.
Powerforce inherited the Molson Coors account and took them to Team of the Year status. The team has been of FMBE’s most successful in its history.
Circle kept up a fine record edging Haygarth and Clarins out with their roadshow for Orbis. Haygarth and Clarins did get to gold in the Engagement category.
A huge win for DRP Group saw their B2E event for Nationwide win with an immense company get together at the NEC.
PrettyGreen stayed in the winner’s frame with Pandora.
Hope&Glory clocked two wins including a heartfelt moving tribute to those who had lost their battle with cancer for Marie Curie.
Wasserman’s actor filled train experience for Bombay Sapphire won and catapulted the agency back to the AoY prize.
Laura Landamore, Willow Park was a notable brand ambassador gold winner in a year when the hosted a Brand Ambassador’s Reception ahead of the awards at the Oxo Tower, sponsored by Wave. Brand Ambassador has been elevated to a lead category ever since. Laura’s win was one for a regular FMBE winner. Her versatility means she performs, scripts and sells for tech brands as well as managing accounts.
Fizz and Costco won the Operational Success of the Year.
Energy entered for the first time and won – with their immaculate staging of Roll Royce and art at Goodwood FoS. It’s a campaign our judges often recall.
N2O struck gold in the shopper category with Felix. The VR in store experience was a breakthrough win for N2O, the one that marked the agency’s expansion following winning the Tesco contract.
2018 – Troxy – with Pat Sharp
Link Communications’ win in Retail Experience with the microwave burger team for Rustler’s was the first in a series of category defining wins for the agency.
Logobrand’s Field Data win with Britvic was also a benchmarker – it focused on Net Sales Value driven actions.
Elevate, nowadays a Global staffing agency announced its direction of travel with a fine win in team with Oculus.
REL won the Tactical category with Mondelez for Cadbury at Easter, a very consistent presence in the category frame ever since. Chocolate ruled these FMBEs – Cadbury also won with BD Network and twice with MKTG and Ferrero Rocher won with agency TraceyLocke.
Instore won, bringing magazine category success to Sainsbury’s.
Pladis won two categories with two field agencies, ExSellence in Instore and Powerforce for field sales team of the year.
Jackanory won a great gold in Immersive Event presenting Hamburg as a destination at the Truman Brewery in London.
WeAreFearless and Bridgestone had a fine win in Creative with an Olympic sponsorship activation that saw invited individuals to take to the high diving board with champion diver Chris Mears.
N2O’s wins with Tesco and with Castrol helped the growing agency to make agency of the year for the first time.
Two golds for Irish agency PRL saw them emerge as a force to be reckoned with at FMBE.
Circle and Dorset Cereals won the Special Award.
Provision Events were the operational success of the year with Callaway Golf.
REL Field Marketing stormed back to win FM Agency of the Year, showing a raft of successes with both FMCG and Consumer Electronics brands.
2019 – Syon House, Richmond – with Lucy Porter
McCurrach with Unilever Ice Cream and Kru Live with Bright Partnerships both took team golds.
Link successfully defended the retail experience category, this time championing True Nopal Cactus Water.
Logobrand, Instore, N2O, Tactical Solutions and Reach picked up FM golds with Reach’s work at Heathrow, providing a VIP shopper service being a stand out win.
Blue Square won the immersive event, controlled audience category with Samsung – a sign that this agency could travel seamlessly from FM to BE success.
Independent Events won with an emotive campaign for Road Respect.
Circle, with Milk&More won the roadshow category.
Creative tech innovation from Flashmat (now Lighthouse) saw the team win with D&AD for a Doodle Booth, an immersive spin on a photo booth.
Wave matched gold winning sister agency McCurrach with a gold of their own for HP in Engagement.
eXPD8 won gold in the Special Award for Staff Wellbeing with their Disability Confident programme. The same agency also won Professional Agency Management for an account win in Tesco that saw the agency accredited to Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda.
MKTG took a second Brand Experience Agency of the Year award and Field Sales Solutions took a second FM Agency of the Year win. Experience 12 and ExSellence shared the new agency plaudits.
2020 – FMBE Towers – with Frank Wainwright
Covid hit. When other awards programmes dropped their awards ceremonies and just posted online, and one event shockingly just texted its winners we ripped up the rule book.
Disappointed by some soulless virtual event systems, FMBE built a studio at Frank’s home and invited all the finalists to live interviews online ahead of each award being revealed. Our live broadcast spanned 13 hours and started with handfuls of viewers. By the end an online party for 150,000 viewers was in full swing and a huge advert had gone out to the world showing why live events stayed relevant and investable.
Circle had a huge night, seeing multiple wins for their Covid busting work with Costa, and a special event just pre-Covid for Death Stranding – culminating in an easy BE agency of the year win.
Category golds for Logobrand and Britvic shored up a second win in Agency of the Year in their FMBE history. Unlike Circle, they didn’t have it their own way with strong challenges from Acosta Europe Reach, Field Sales Solutions and REL Field Marketing.
Team of the Year was hotly contested with Field Sales Solutions and P&G taking the nod.
The immersive event category was rescued by a magnificent winner – TRO and BMW who staged an outstanding drive in screening of Formula E at a socially distanced drive in, in central Berlin.
A pre-Covid event for Boeing by 2Heads helped them to gold.
Bristol Investment District won gold alongside agency Plaster for a hearts campaign that saw the city paint hearts onto its open spaces so that the city centre could reopen for socially distanced picnicking.
Having the brand ambassadors all with us online proved compelling viewing and a fantastic advert for the talent that many FMBE agencies successfully furloughed. Golds went to Carly Gamble at Blue Square with Samsung and Andrew Elliott for REL Field Marketing and Weetabix, presented by our now chair of judges, Tim Fletcher, Carlsberg-Britvic.
Blue Square and Samsung enjoyed several other successes. They had pivoted with energy and imagination during lockdown. The agency also won with Black British Excellence, showing off the investment in studio-based event creation.
Acosta impressed best of the agency pivots in the Professional Agency Management category. Raptor’s mid-campaign pivot to online ambassadors for a Tinder student campaign was also very well received and won sliver.