The IPM Awards 2026

The IPM is proud to announce the IPM Awards 2026, returning with the promotional marketing calendar’s flagship moment. After another standout, sell-out celebration last year, we’re getting ready to bring together the brands, agencies and partners who make shopper-facing creativity happen in the real world.

Be Part of the Industry Gold Standard

For more than five decades, the Awards have recognised the work that proves the power of promotions, incentives, loyalty, experiential and brand partnerships, where strategy meets execution and results are earned, not assumed. Each year, hundreds of entries showcase ideas that shift behaviour, unlock value for shoppers, and raise the standard for how our sector shows up across retail, live environments and digital channels.

Entries Open NOW!

Entries are now open for the 2026 IPM Awards, key dates and information below:

Key dates

  • Early Bird Deadline: 26th March, 4pm

  • Standard Entry Deadline: 30th April, 4pm

  • Late. Entry Deadline: 14th May, 4pm.

If you are new to the IPM Awards and would like guidance on our categories and how to enter, please contact us at awards@theipm.org.uk to book a 15 min awards consultation call.

View all the awards information in our awards entry brochure.

Relive the Magic – IPM Awards 2025 Gallery

2026 Categories

The categories showcased a range of promotional marketing activity across multiple sectors. Reflecting our values to protect, promote and progress—along with the core disciplines of our community groups—the awards classifications offered a diverse representation of talent, opportunities to demonstrate creativity, and more chances to win.

Are you ready to showcase your promotional marketing brilliance? Enter your campaigns into our Sector Categories and stand a chance to win a coveted IPM Award! Highlighting the diverse sectors within the promotional marketing landscape, these categories celebrate excellence and innovation across various industries.

Alcohol Beverage

Promotional marketing campaigns created for any alcoholic beverage product or brand.


Non-Alcoholic Beverage

Promotional marketing campaigns created for any beverage product organisation. This can be non or low-alcohol or soft beverage categories.


Food

Promotional marketing campaigns created for food product, brand or service.


Entertainment & Sport

Promotional marketing campaigns created for any entertainment or sports, this can relate to TV, Film, Sports Clubs, Brands or Organisations.


Household Products and Services

Promotional marketing campaigns created for any household products or services, this can include consumer durables, vehicles, subscription services, and utilities.


Healthcare, Beauty & Fashion

Promotional marketing campaigns created for healthcare products and services, beauty brands, and fashion brands, retailers, and services.


Retail & E-Commerce

Promotional marketing campaigns created for any retail and/or e-commerce brand or service.


Travel, Leisure and Tourism

Promotional marketing campaigns created for travel brands or services, leisure facilities, providers or brands, and tourism providers and organisations.

Experiential marketing brings brands and consumers together, giving an unprecedented opportunity for audiences to experience brands directly, recognising the best delivery of experiential campaigns across a variety of environments.

Best Experience at or Near Point of Purchase

This award celebrates campaigns that create memorable brand experiences right where it counts – at or near the point of purchase. Whether through in-store activations, digital engagement, or compelling promotional materials, we honour initiatives that captivate consumers and drive brand affinity at this crucial moment.


Best Brand Experience in Non-Retail Public Space, Event, or Festival

Celebrating incredible campaigns that create exceptional brand experiences in public spaces, events, festivals, or roadshows. Whether through immersive installations, interactive exhibits, or engaging activations, this category recognises initiatives that effectively connect with audiences outside traditional retail settings.


Best Creative and Innovative Experience

This award highlights experiential marketing campaigns that brilliantly showcase storytelling and magic. Celebrating creativity and innovation, this category recognises campaigns that captivate audiences, leaving a lasting impression by delivering truly compelling brand experiences.


Best Sampling Activation

This coveted accolade celebrates excellence in experiential marketing with a focus on sampling activations. Recognising campaigns that effectively engage audiences through immersive sampling experiences, this award honours creativity, innovation, and impact. From tantalising taste tests to memorable product demonstrations, nominees showcase outstanding execution in bringing brands to life through hands-on interactions.

A core foundation within promotional marketing, this category recognises excellence across retail and shopper. Focusing on campaigns relating to on-pack promotion or driving effectiveness and sales via e-commerce.

Best Creative Shopper Activation

This award celebrates the most impactful and innovative shopper activation campaign that resonates with consumers, drives engagement, and delivers tangible results. Demonstrate exceptional creativity, strategic planning, and execution, influencing consumer behaviour at the point of purchase. From immersive in-store experiences to digital activations, they employ cutting-edge tactics, understanding consumer insights to create memorable interactions. The recipient embodies excellence in shopper activation, driving sales, fostering brand loyalty, and inspiring consumer advocacy.


Best Shopper Promotion In, On or With Pack

This category celebrates innovative marketing initiatives that creatively engage consumers through promotions directly linked to product packaging. Recognising campaigns that effectively utilise packaging to boost brand visibility, drive sales, and foster consumer loyalty, this award honours strategic thinking, innovation, and measurable impact. From on-pack contests to in-pack surprises, this accolade highlights campaigns that leverage packaging as a powerful tool for consumer engagement and promotion.

Celebrating the unique, exciting, and innovative execution of incentive, prize, and loyalty campaigns. Engaging industry data and attracting actionable responses from consumers through outstanding campaigns.

Best Incentive and/or Prize Promotion

This prestigious accolade celebrates campaigns that excel in offering compelling incentives or prizes to drive engagement and achieve desired outcomes. Recognising creativity, effectiveness, and measurable impact, this award honours initiatives that effectively motivate audiences to take action. From enticing rewards to innovative prize structures, nominees showcase excellence in designing promotions that captivate and inspire.


Best Loyalty Campaign

This coveted award celebrates campaigns that excel in fostering long-term customer loyalty. Recognising creativity, effectiveness, and measurable impact, this award honours initiatives that successfully engage and retain loyal customers. From innovative rewards programs to personalised experiences, nominees showcase excellence in building lasting relationships and driving repeat business.


Best Management of Incentive, Prize and/or Loyalty Promotions

This category recognises excellence in the management of incentive, prize, or loyalty promotions, whether through an agency-led campaign, an in-house initiative, or an innovative platform solution. Entries should demonstrate how multiple factors—including logistics, regulation compliance, technology, and customer experience—were effectively managed to ensure campaign success.

This category focuses on the meticulous delivery of promotional marketing services – including fixed fee solutions, staffing, POS management, fulfilment, data management, payment solutions, and reporting. Celebrating cutting-edge service delivery that delivers exceptional results.

Best Promotional Marketing Management/Service

This prestigious recognition celebrates outstanding service providers within the promotional marketing industry. Acknowledging excellence in fulfilment, couponing, online promotional services, reward platforms, and more, this award honours companies that consistently deliver exceptional solutions to elevate promotional campaigns. From seamless execution to innovative approaches, nominees showcase excellence in providing indispensable services that drive success for brands and businesses.


Best Staffing and Event Support

This award recognises excellence in providing staffing and event support services that ensure seamless execution and outstanding experiences at live campaigns and events of all scales and types. Nominees in this category demonstrate exceptional proficiency in sourcing, training and deploying staff, as well as offering comprehensive event support solutions such as logistic management, stand build and sourcing that enhance the overall success of each occasion.

Highlighting the power of partnership marketing in the contemporary activation mix. Seeking measurable excellence and demonstrations of innovative partnerships.

Best Brand Partnership (Dual or Multi-Brand)

Celebrating exceptional collaborations between two or more brands, highlighting innovative partnerships that result in synergistic marketing initiatives. Whether it’s a dual-brand collaboration or a multi-brand alliance, this award recognises campaigns that effectively leverage the strengths of each partner to create unique and impactful experiences for consumers.


Best Sponsorship Promotion/Activation

Celebrating exceptional collaborations between two or more brands, highlighting innovative partnerships that result in synergistic marketing initiatives. Whether it’s a dual-brand collaboration or a multi-brand alliance, this award recognises campaigns that effectively leverage the strengths of each partner to create unique and impactful experiences for consumers.

The award-winning entries in these categories will demonstrate a clear focus on meeting business activation objectives requiring specific marketing techniques to meet or exceed the overall KPIs.

Best Use of Technology, AI and/or Digital Channels

Recognising the compelling use of technology and digital channels for incredible campaigns. This award highlights creativity, effectiveness, and measurable impact, this award honours initiatives that leverage cutting-edge technology, AI and augmented reality and/or digital platforms to engage audiences, enhance brand visibility, and drive results.


Best Use of Data and Insight

This prestigious accolade celebrates the exceptional utilisation of data and insights throughout the conceptualisation, delivery, or reporting of promotional marketing campaigns. Recognising the power of data-driven decision-making, this award honours campaigns that demonstrate innovative and impactful use of data and insights to drive strategic direction, enhance targeting precision, and optimise campaign performance.


Best Use of Social Media and/or Influencers

This distinguished category shines a spotlight on promotional marketing campaigns that leverage the power of social media and influencers to achieve remarkable success. Celebrating innovation and creativity, this award recognises campaigns that effectively harness the influence of social media platforms and influencers to drive impactful and engaging promotional initiatives.


Best Business-to-Business Campaign

This category celebrates outstanding B2B campaigns that have effectively engaged business audiences, driven measurable results, and demonstrated strategic creativity. Whether through digital, experiential, content-led, or multi-channel approaches, entries should showcase a deep understanding of the target market, compelling messaging, and innovative execution.


Best Environmental/Positive Impact Campaign

Have you spearheaded an extraordinary campaign that champions environmental causes or promotes positive social impact? This category celebrates activations, programs, and initiatives that go above and beyond to support meaningful causes and drive positive change. Whether advocating for environmental conservation, promoting sustainable practices, or supporting social causes, nominees showcase exceptional dedication to making a difference.


Best Trial and/or Acquisition Campaign

This category celebrates campaigns with a primary objective focused on trial and/or the acquisition of new consumers, shoppers, or business customers. Whether for a new or existing product trial, entries should showcase the strategic approach used to attract new customers and provide compelling evidence demonstrating the achievement of acquisition targets. Results may include sales figures, market share data, or other forms of evidence highlighting successful outcomes.


Best New Product Launch

This category honours campaigns specifically designed to support the launch of a new product, whether it’s a completely new offering or a substantially different variant of an existing product, such as a new flavour variant. Entrants must demonstrate measurable objectives and results, clearly outlining the consumer need and the unique challenges overcome during the launch activation.


Best Integrated Campaign

This award celebrates the pinnacle of campaign execution, recognising initiatives that flawlessly deliver a central message across multiple touch-points and disciplines to effectively engage audiences. From seamless coordination of traditional and digital marketing channels to strategic alignment of messaging across various platforms, nominees showcase excellence in integrating diverse tactics to achieve cohesive and impactful campaigns.


Best Small Budget Campaign

This category celebrates creativity, innovation, and successful delivery within small-budget campaigns. Recognising the strategic utilisation of diverse channels and methods to achieve key objectives, this award honours campaigns that demonstrate outstanding ingenuity and effectiveness despite limited resources.

Grand Prix

The ultimate award and one that demonstrates above all others the ability to think outside the box, push boundaries and execute great delivery whilst delivering genuine industry impact. All Gold Award winners are automatically nominated for the Grand Prix.


Agency of the Year

Who will be crowned agency of the year? This award is given to the agency that has won the most across all the categories. This prestigious and much sought-after award gives the winner the fantastic opportunity to say “we are the number 1 agency”.

Eligibility

To enter this year’s Awards, your work needs to:

• Drive a specific, demonstrable human behaviour. This means getting someone to buy, try, share, play, collect, visit, download, create, recommend, trade, donate.

• Be an experience, incentive or interaction used to influence that behaviour.

• Be a campaign that has measurable results.

• Be delivered in market from 01 January 2025 to 31 January 2026. It doesn’t need to have been created in this period – simply that it ran during this period.

• Be signed off by the brand owner.

• Have run in the UK. However, if you have run a campaign outside of the UK, you can still enter, provided it was created or managed by a UK-based agency or marketing services provider.

• Be compliant with the CAP Code. Each campaign will be vetted by our Legal Team.

View our full Terms and Conditions

Sponsorship opportunities

We’re actively seeking engaging sponsors for the IPM Awards 2026. Sponsorship places your organisation at the centre of the conversation, aligned with the campaigns and teams setting the pace across promotional marketing. It’s a chance to build meaningful visibility with IPM’s membership and wider industry audience, and to be part of the programme that celebrates excellence while helping drive the sector forward.

With increased channels, awareness and marketing support, sponsorship offers up to nine months of exposure across IPM channels, from launch and entry season through to the event and post event coverage.

What Sponsorship Can Include

Sponsorship is designed to be flexible, with packages that can be tailored to your goals, whether you’re looking to build brand presence, create standout content, or connect directly with the community.

  • Co-branding across key digital platforms and Awards communications

  • Visibility across pre event and post event comms, including Awards emails and video content

  • Event branding opportunities, including sponsored category moments

  • The opportunity to deliver pre agreed activity at the Awards event

  • Category partnership opportunities available on a first come first served basis

Words from Our Previous Winners

“The IPM Awards are the pinnacle of industry recognition, celebrating the very best in promotions across the UK. It’s a fantastic moment to take a step back and celebrate the achievements of both our teams and the brands we work with.”

Catherine Shuttleworth
Founder

Savvy Marketing

“The IPM Awards are a showcase for the industry, delivering, demonstrating, and celebrating best practice while extolling the value and effectiveness of promotions as part of the marketing mix.”

Nancy Cullen
CEO/Co-Founder

SpaceandPeople

“The IPM Awards are one of the few occasions where campaigns are judged on both effectiveness and creativity. The awards give a brilliant opportunity for promotions with smaller budgets to be judged on an equal footing with higher-profile peers.”

David Pearson
CEO

Spark Agency

Grand Prix Winner 2025

“Agencies work tirelessly all year to help their clients meet and exceed ambitious marketing objectives. Seeing your work deliver results in the real world, and earning positive client feedback, is always rewarding. Having that work recognised by the IPM and its expert judging panel adds a different, powerful layer of validation.

Winning the IPM Grand Prix for our Pringles x Super Mario campaign meant a great deal to Brand Culture. It gave us a moment to pause, celebrate our team’s craft and commitment, and share that achievement with our wider network. It has also helped open meaningful conversations with new clients looking to create culturally relevant, effective work.”

Agency of The Year 2025 – ZEAL

ZEAL Co-Founder Stewart Hilton talks to the IPM at the Awards 2025, off the back of winning agency of the year.

Do you have what it takes to be crowned Agency of the Year 2026? Enter the IPM Awards 2026

Make Savings on Entries
Become an IPM Member Today

For over 90 years, the IPM has set the benchmark for promotional marketing, equipping members with the insights, accreditation, and influence to lead while ensuring campaigns remain protected and compliant.

Proudly Sponsored By

The IPM Awards would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors. Their contributions help us celebrate excellence, innovation, and impact across the promotional marketing industry. If you would like to find out more about becoming an IPM sponsor, please email jodyb@theipm.org.uk

Make Savings on Entries and Tickets. Become an IPM Member Today.

For over 90 years, the IPM has set the benchmark for promotional marketing, equipping members with the insights, accreditation, and influence to lead while ensuring campaigns remain protected and compliant.

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