Judges

The awards are judged by an esteemed panel of industry leaders and experts, the judging is a rigorous two-stage process including pre-scoring to determine shortlists and a judging meeting where entries are discussed and evaluated in detail to decide the winning entries.

Become a Judge Previous Judges Top Tips from our Judges

Lukas Adamec | Consultant

Lukas Adamec has been working within Paid Digital for 11+ years, during which he transitioned from an employee to a freelancer & CEO of Abadam Marketing. In the last 5 years Lukas has focused on Consultancy - working with established agencies to deliver client growth. His focus is particularly on international paid opportunities, from Google to Yandex, from Naver to Baidu, from Yahoo JP to Seznam. Lukas is a firm believer in knowledge sharing and enjoys discussing experiences with established online marketers as well as providing training to new colleagues. During his time off, Lukas recharges his energy by being disconnected from online influences and instead spends his time on wildlife photography.

Atif Ahmed | Head of Digital Product | BT, EE & Plusnet

Atif, is a digital and product leader currently working with BT Group. With over 15 years experience in the industry covering Digital, Product, Commercial and Operations. Atif is also a father of 2 boys and based in Manchester.

Rich Collingwood | International Digital Manager | Taylor Wessing

Rich Collingwood is the International Digital Manager at law firm Taylor Wessing - a leading global law firm that serves the world's most innovative people and businesses, with clients ranging from startups to some of the largest technology and media companies in the world. Prior to his current position, Rich spent a number of years leading the digital marketing teams and strategy at large complex organisations, including police forces and leading UK housing associations.

LinkedIn profile

Michael Durey | Head of Performance Makreting, CRM & Loyalty | Samsung Electronics

Michael joined Samsung in 2018 and since then has helped to deliver triple digit Ecommerce growth through Samsung’s owned eStore, EPP and Student websites. Aligning Digital Marketing strategies across Search (Paid and Organic), Affiliates, CRM, Paid Social and Programmatic Display has allowed Samsung to maximise in-market traffic through to Samsung.com and ultimately has led to the most successful flagship launch (Galaxy S10) and Black Friday sales period the company has ever had.

Ellie England | Sales Director | Microsoft

Passionate about digital, women in technology and making a lasting impact, Ellie began her career in sales working in an inner city secondary school 'selling' the importance of modern languages to disaffected teenagers. She got in to the world of digital advertising working for Google for 6 years, before eventually relocating to Manchester and joining Microsoft. As a Sales Director for Microsoft Advertising, for the past 5 years. Ellie has been spearheading the continued investment in the North of the UK and beyond, leading a growing team of Account Managers and Directors and juggling life as a proud mother of two pre-schoolers.

Dr Michelle Gledhill | PROGRAMME LEADER MSC CREATIVE ADVERTISING STRATEGY | DEPARTMENT OF MARKETING, RETAIL & TOURISM | MMU

Dr Michelle Gledhill is a specialist in in advertising, branding and media. Her position as Programme Leader for MSc Creative Advertising Strategy at Manchester Metropolitan University combines her expertise in strategic thinking when working in consultation on live briefs with brands such as Manchester City, the Happy Linen Company and Manchester Gin, with her passion for developing and nurturing student talent in the Manchester and across the UK. Her fascination for branding led her to complete a unique doctoral thesis on how brands are processed whilst playing videogames. She is a highly experienced marketer, Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), CIM Senior Examiner and HE Examiner.

Cheryl Hill | Digital Marketing Director | SkipTheDishes

Cheryl Hill is the Director of Digital Marketing at SkipTheDishes, Canada's leading and largest food delivery network. Cheryl leads Skip's media buying and digital strategy across Search, CRM, Paid Media, SEO, and Social Media via data-driven insights that connect with Canadians. Prior to Skip, Cheryl served at Metric Marketing as Director of Digital Marketing, where she established teams and led the creation of digital products. For more than a decade, Hill also led her own successful digital marketing consultancy and honed her trade in the UK finance industry, where she pioneered a digital marketing team within the largest mortgage, insurance, and loans brokerage in Scotland.

Tim Hutchinson | Head of Digital Development | Slater & Gordon

Tim’s been producing innovative digital products and experiences for over 20 years. From branch experiences for Barclays bank, websites for Universal Music and ‘clever little telly’ apps for Freesat, to ticket management systems for the Olympic Games and most recently, a complete web redesign re-platform for Slater and Gordon – he’s produced great technology led products and experiences for some of the most prominent corporate clients and brands in the world. With a unique blend of creative and technical knowledge, he possess a practical and intellectual understanding of strategy, UX and UI design, data analysis and research, agile delivery, product management and leadership.

Lada Kalashnickova | Head of SEO | CopyBet

Lada has worked in digital marketing since 2003. She specializes in all aspects of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), with a focus on technical SEO, multilingual search and mobile optimization. Her clients have included Starco, Action-MCFR, and Artec 3D. Lada worked as a Global Head of SEO in Acronis, then she was a Head of SEO at SEMRush. Lada now works as the Head of SEO/ASO in CopyBet EU Ltd, the first social betting platform founded in 2015. CopyBet is a fast-growing tech company, focused on providing the best experience for their customers while following the principles of Transparency and Fair Trade.  Lada enjoys lifetime studying; most recently on topics around data, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning. Her favorite tools are Excel, GWT, GA, Yandex Metrica and brains. Outside of work, she enjoys travelling, yoga, and Japanese Art. Definitely a cat person.

Jonathan Kettleborough | SENIOR LECTURER | Manchester Metropolitan University

Jonathan has been involved with technology for over 30 years, firstly learning how to program in BASIC, then later holding a number of senior positions delivering technology solutions. He launching a consulting business which he ran for almost 20-years, working in sectors including financial services, nuclear, retail and telecommunications. Now in academia and sharing some of his knowledge, Jonathan is a Senior Lecturer in Information Systems Strategy and also Programme Leader for the BSc Business Technology at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is passionate about the role of business and technology within the economy and has recently conducted research to determine if there is a productivity ‘sweet-spot’ connected with home and hybrid working.

Umar Khan | Senior Digital Strategist | Nakheel Malls

Umar is a passionate digital marketer with over 8 years of experience in managing high budget digital marketing campaigns. With experience and expertise on all the verticals of Digital Channels including SEO, Google Ads, Social Media, Content Marketing, CRO UX and others. Umar is currently linked with DAMAC Properties as the Digital Marketing Manager. He also conducts digital marketing workshops & regular classes for well-known educational institutes in Dubai.

Kaz Laljee | Head of Digital | Soc-Med: Social Media

A Chartered Marketer with years of experience, both as an academic and practitioner. Kaz has been involved in marketing since university and has a real passion for it! It gives him the perfect blend of knowledge and industry experience; which has seen him establish himself as an authority when it comes to digital marketing. Kaz also has a knack for taking complex marketing theory and technical jargon and making it easy to understand

Karl Lillrud | Public Speaker

Known as one of the world's TOP 30 Business Coaches 2022, TOP 30 Ecommerce and Online Business Growth experts, proven success record of generating 300% increased conversion. Karl Lillrud speaks and coaches on subjects that enable companies to get more out of the world of Digital Commerce. Top expert on Digital Commerce, future, innovation and leadership for business growth online. With an extensive experience from supporting Unicorn Start-ups to Fortune 500 companies like H&M, Spotify, Volvo, AstraZeneca and many more in multiple industries i.e. from Internet-based,  E-Commerce, Retail,  Cars, Pharmaceuticals, Government, Telecom, Bank and finance, Media and more. Contact Karl if you are looking for a truly inspiring speaker or a top class mentor/coach.

LinkedIn profile

Davina Lines | Managing Director | Mixing Digital

Davina Lines is Managing Director of Mixing Digital and the Ecommerce Club. She brings a wealth of knowledge and a big black book of digital contacts to ensure Mixing Digital’s event management services are of the highest standard. Davina co-founded Netimperative in 1999 and became Managing Director in 2002, stewarding the brand into new product launches and creating one of the most successful events programmes in the digital marketing industry. In the mid 90s Davina cut her digital teeth on New Media Age (now Econsultancy), forming part of the founding team and was responsible for the commercial development of the magazine and its early events from launch in May 1995 to 1999. In recent years Davina launched an ecommerce peer-to-peer community, the Ecommerce Club, which runs regular events in London and Manchester on topics relevant to the retail community.

Alicia McNaught | Head of Digital Experience | COS

Abdelaziz Mohammed | Marketing & eCommerce Consultant

Abdelaziz has been into the eCommerce space for 15 years now. He was working at Amazon as regional head of digital Marketing. Before Amazon he was heading central performance marketing team at Souq (acquired by Amazon). He was responsible for planning and budgeting marketing spend for MENA regions in Souq.com. Marketing, Ecommerce and Customer Experience professional with a proven track record of successfully improving digital performance for major brands within a variety of sectors in MENA region, including Dubizzle (OLX group), Souq (Amazon Middle East), Najm, H&M, Mother care, Victoria Secrets, Bath and Body Works and Emaar. Extensive experience of managing ecommerce websites (inc. +$1B turnover), leading large digital teams and driving cost effective marketing programmes.

Claire Richardson-Critcher | Digital Business Development Director | McCann Connected

Over the last 15 years Claire has worked in media, creative and digital in multiple capacities, from client service to new business development. Claire’s passion for the industry drives her curiosity in all areas of brand and consumer interaction, and her focus on working in close collaboration with skilled practitioners means she is able to build a story around what they do, how they do it and how this drives a transformational outcome for clients.

Mohsin Shafiq | Head of Digital and Marketing | Sodexo

Mohsin Shafiq plays at the intersection of marketing and digital transformation. He has worked on various digital marketing, sales and operational excellence projects: from developing and implementing multichannel marketing and communications delivery programmes; to developing go-to-market strategies; to remapping the customer journey by integrating sales and marketing capabilities to drive top line growth

Peter Sumpton | Marketing Consultant | Marketing Study Lab

Having seen first-hand what poor marketing tactics and ineffective marketing strategies can do to a business, Peter knows how to effectively take the building blocks of Marketing and formulate sound, structured and implementable plans for long-term success. Peter has held many positions within Marketing, from assistant to heading up several Marketing Departments. This ‘from the ground up’ approach allowed Peter to hone his skills and develop an understanding that every business is unique, everyone has their part to play and that success comes from well-designed Marketing strategies. The passion and commitment to the profession Peter loves can be infectious! Peter covers the entire marketing genre from strategic planning to creative thinking and consumer engagement, culminating in his ultimate goal of helping as many Marketers and Marketing Departments become central to their business in providing a Marketing-led approach and achieving long term success.

Chelsea Teesdale | Head of Digital Marketing | The Warehouse Project

John Wright | Head of Digital Growth | Lion Little World Beverages

John is Head of Digital Growth for Lion Little World Beverages and oversees all digital activity across a growing portfolio of some much loved UK craft beer brands. His role includes all build and optimisation, acquisition and engagement, plus data analytics and compliance. Always striving for innovation through content, tools and data John is obsessed with the building of high performing digital experiences. Also actively providing consultancy and implementation services to several enterprise businesses around SEO, data analytics and website build

Top Tips from the Judges

Gerry White, JustEat

Don’t waffle, make sure it is meat rather than buzz word stuff, if it feels like the paragraph doesn’t say anything all it does is frustrate smart judges. Concise answers are often better with a fuller explanation below.
Answer the question, all too often it feels like the question has been missed – going off tangent is fine but front load the answer to the question, we understand you often want to say something else something that really is important to you and your entry but our marking criteria means we need to be able to answer the question. In programming there is something called ‘rubber duck debugging’ imagine you are explaining this to a rubber duck it works well for programmers, the same principle would apply to award entries.
Don’t underestimate the judges, if you say you have done xyz, we can check – we have the knowledge and experience to validate many claims, our knowledge and experience are suitably high enough for us to be able to validate almost all claims. Percentage increases are valid but backed up with enough numbers that we understand it was a real impact not a low number to a still low number.

Daniel Evans, MSL Group

Tell a story! Numbers, clicks, growth, client satisfaction etc are all good as evidence to support why you should get an award, but they are not reasons in themselves.
Don’t be afraid of telling the bad as well as the good. good work in difficult circumstances, or challenges overcome, are just as award-worthy as effortless brilliance.
Remember that to be worthy of an award you need to stand out, not just be creditable. Emphasise what is exceptional about what you are submitting, including what constitutes the “normal” that you are standing out against. the judges may not be as familiar with your specific area of business as you are.

Become a judge

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