It’s a great pleasure to introduce the Call for Entries for the Marketing Society Star Awards 2020. As someone who has both judged and received Awards (and had equal pleasure from both, well almost) it’s a real honour to become Chair.

The Star Awards are a fantastic opportunity to celebrate all the hard work we do and ensure the sweat and tears don’t go unnoticed or indeed unrewarded.

It was great to see in our annual research that 71% of respondents agreed the awards help build a world leading marketing community. However, there was also some feedback from some of you that you’d like us to share more of what made the winning work, well, win. We’ve listened and I’m delighted to say that this year we’re going to ask the judging chairs to write a short summary of the rationale for the Gold Star winners and include this copy on the website for afterwards. Hopefully this will also help others to write future winning entries.

There are a couple of other positive changes this year – we’re revising the scoring of the Star Agency and Marketing Team of the Year Awards to upweight the contribution of the paper submission, reflecting the times and effort that goes into writing these.

And, in recognition that talent is ageless, we’re removing the age limit on the Rising Star awards. This ensures that those perhaps coming later to marketing or returning after a break can still get the recognition they deserve.

Petra Cameron

Star Awards Chair and Head of Advertising and Content, Royal Bank of Scotland