Winning is wonderful, but taking part can be PR gold!

We have a certain expertise around awards here at Suzanne Howe Communications (SHC). After all, we’ve been organising the Golden Service Awards for Kimberly-Clark Professional™ (KCP) for over 18 years!

But this year has been rather special for SHC, and underwrites much of what we recommend to our clients in terms of the value of entering relevant industry awards schemes.

We entered the Best Longstanding Event category in the ‘Awards Awards’ as we call them – the prestigious Conference & Events Awards 2025 – with our long-term involvement with KCP’s Golden Service Awards, and we were delighted to become a finalist. This led to a great deal of media coverage and we are currently still displaying the finalist logo on our email footers.

Shortly after that, in July – and my thanks to my colleague Bill Bruce, who made the nomination – I was named as a finalist in the Packaging Marketing Excellence Award category of Packaging News’ Women in Packaging Excellence Awards.

When I heard the news, I was surprised, and quietly thrilled – and wondered if I should be at the event. I attended with two of my colleagues, Deborah Sparkes and Vicky Huxford and we had a great evening. As there were so many worthy contenders, I was shocked when I was announced as the category winner!

To be involved in an awards scheme which puts the spotlight on the important role of women in the packaging industry is a real honour. To be a winner is a real accolade. My thanks go to everyone at Packaging News and EMAP, and of course, the judging panel.

Not wanting to blow my own trumpet (though I’ve been in the PR business for many years, so why not), you can read what the judges had to say here.

The win created an opportunity for a press release which gained significant coverage and great reactions on LinkedIn. All our email footers still carry the winners logo.

Why awards matters

We consistently recommend entering relevant industry awards scheme to our clients and many of them do so with extremely positive results.

Our client Sabert recently won a coveted Green Apple award for its innovative Tray2Go foodservice packaging solution, and also won the New Product category at the British Sandwich & Food to Go Industry Awards – The Sammies – for the Snap2Go range, a fully recyclable solution for chilled meals and food-to-go outlets. Both wins led to considerable PR exposure both in trade media and via LinkedIn.

In March our client P-Wave (a brand of Robert Scott) won the Marketing Campaign of the Year category at the 24th European Office Product Awards in Amsterdam in March 2025, for its body awareness partnership with NHS England. Read more about this important men’s health initiative here.

A well prepared awards entry is likely to achieve at least the status of finalist which generates positive PR and creates the opportunity to thank staff and stakeholders for their contribution. It sets a context for a business alongside its competitors and puts a focus on best practice. SHC helps our clients to make the most of their finalist status and we can then take this one step further if the client is named as a winner.

Winning a relevant industry award provides third-party external validation of your hard work and creates a powerful marketing and PR opportunity, which helps to benchmark you against competitors. A nomination or a win enhances credibility and reputation for your business, which in turn can attract new clients, investors, and talent. It also inspires employees, boosting confidence and morale for individuals and teams, which can contribute to a high-performance culture.

For many years we have witnessed the uplift created by awards nominations and wins across the sectors in which we specialise and we are pleased to take an active role in celebrating these successes.

They say that taking part is important, and we agree – but as I’ve discovered for myself this year, winning adds something rather special.