Gartner Marketing & Communications Awards

Honoring CCOs who elevated Communications through strategic leadership, innovation and enterprise-wide impact.

Technological advancements, shifting audience dynamics, and increasing organizational complexity require Chief Communications Officers (CCOs) to adapt and strengthen their role as a true business leader. CCOs must lead their functions into the next era by successfully managing three simultaneous priorities: 

1. Driving successful change comms that enable successful enterprise AI transformation
2. Defining reputation management protocols to manage the risk of widespread AI-fueled truth decay
3. Increasing Communications’ data and analytics capabilities to meet business partner expectations of Communications’ value in an AI-enabled organization.

This award honors an individual who exemplifies exceptional leadership in navigating the unique challenges faced by Chief Communications Officers, driving remarkable performance within their team and function. 

Honoring transformative CMO leadership who have driven innovation, growth and business impact.

Successful Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) must serve as Future Forward CMOs, leading their functions to manage disruption, drive long-term business growth, and accentuate the strategic value of Marketing. Future Forward CMOs manage marketing as a strategic capability, positioning the function as a proactive business partner that drives enterprise-wide value. They steward their functions from achieving AI-driven efficiencies to transformational AI value, and they bridge strategy and operations to drive long-term, customer-aligned growth.

This award celebrates an individual who has excelled in overcoming complex challenges, significantly elevating the performance of their team and function.

Awarding excellence in audience-centric design, storytelling, and channel orchestration for internal and external audiences.

Great content is the cornerstone of audience engagement and powers the experience audiences have with your organization. In an environment where the customer journey is increasingly non-linear, the ability to deliver relevant, personalized content must be matched by the internal capacity to support that experience. Content capabilities and distribution must scale across channels, geographies and business units to serve audiences that include external customers and/or internal stakeholders.

This award honors leaders and teams who have excelled in audience experience, fostering customer advocacy and/or employee engagement through leveraging content as a strategic asset.

Recognizing excellence in building, protecting and activating organizational brand and reputation.

In a highly competitive environment, delivering a truly differentiated brand message and experience is more important than ever. Brand’s role in transformational growth requires leaders to connect the brand’s value directly to business strategy. Successfully activating a brand and/or reputation management strategy requires galvanizing broad internal support to bring the brand to life externally to customers in a way that truly resonates. Furthermore, as guardians of reputation, organizations must implement proactive strategies to manage reputation amidst widespread AI-fueled truth decay.

This award celebrates leaders and teams who have transcended traditional approaches to brand differentiation and reputation strategy, seamlessly integrating internal alignment with impactful external execution to achieve measurable results.

Recognizing initiatives that driven customer acquisition, demand generation and market influence.

The modern buyer moves freely between digital channels and sales interactions. The greatest commercial successes are achieved when Marketing, Sales, and other internal functions work together to drive revenue growth among new and existing customers. Marketing leaders must adapt to changing buyer behaviors by adopting a zero-based approach to channel strategy and designing for a customer-first journey. This requires evolving collaboration to ensure alignment around a unified Go-to-Market (GTM) framework.

This award recognizes teams that have achieved sustained commercial success through innovative collaboration and impactful digital customer engagement, demonstrating strong strategic alignment and operational partnership with Sales.

Highlighting impactful internal communications that fostered alignment, behavior change and employee experience through times of change.

The only thing that’s constant is change. Evolving AI technologies deployed amid one world event after another continue to reshape business markets and organizational landscapes, demanding that Communications functions embrace their mission-critical role in driving successful internal change for enterprise transformation. Communicators remain on the front lines, ensuring that employees understand the change and feel capable of taking action. Success in this area ensures that the internal brand, culture, and ability to meet customer needs become stronger and more competitive.

This award recognizes leaders and teams who have made a significant impact on the employee experience by driving meaningful and creative change within their organizations.

Honoring transformative use of technology, data, and analytics to advance marketing and communications outcomes.

Technology is a mission-critical component of the modern organization. Marketing and Communications leaders rely on a technology stack to improve business outcomes; efficient and innovative use of data and Artificial Intelligence is essential to leading effectively. Building an AI-powered Marketing and Communications organization and overcoming data and analytics challenges are the keys to standing out among the crowd.

This award celebrates leaders and teams who have driven innovation and transformation by integrating technology, data, and robust measurement practices in their functions—recognizing each as a critical pillar of success.

Celebrating teams that have achieved tangible organizational impact through outstanding strategic direction and operational mastery.

The context organizations operate in never ceases to evolve, and effective operational strategy and execution are critical for the enterprise’s ability to sense and respond to change. To deliver greater results than ever before, Marketing and Communications leaders must make strategic decisions regarding structure, operating models and workflows. Great strategic leadership and operational mastery improve the productivity of Marketing and/or Communications’ work and enable scalable, ongoing cross-functional alignment and collaboration.

This award recognizes teams that have delivered sustained strategic and operational impact through effective organizational design, process optimization, and governance practices. Winning entries will showcase how specific transformation initiatives improved key outcomes such as increased functional speed or agility, enhanced stakeholder satisfaction, and greater organizational efficiency.