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I’m tremendously excited about the launch of the 2011 Marketing Week Engage Awards. We unveiled the Engage Awards last year after rethinking the way that we deliver all content. At the time there seemed to be a widespread resignation that industry awards schemes lacked any real brand distinction and for that reason the various award ceremonies became largely interchangeable.

We decided to do something about this and ended up with more of a celebration than an awards ceremony. The thousand-plus marketers that attended our first Engage Awards bash in the Grosvenor House Hotel’s Great Room on 18 May told us it was the best industry party they had been to. Having sat in on several planning meetings, I can confidently tell you that the 2011 Engage Awards ceremony will be bigger and better.

Considering that last year’s event was hosted by radio legend Chris Evans, featured entertainment from chart-topping band The Hoosiers and had many of you partying throughout the night, that is some promise. As I said, I’m confident.

“The 2010 Engage Awards saw you flood us with record numbers of entries… demonstrating the value in engaging with and understanding your customer”

The 2010 Engage Awards saw you flood us with record numbers of entries. Each one was a worthy winner, demonstrating the value in engaging with and understanding your customer. Helping identify the winners was one of the most arduous tasks I’ve undertaken since becoming editor of Marketing Week. It was also one of the most enjoyable. I’m ready to do it all again.

This year has seen new challenges and new opportunities for marketers.

We may remember 2010 for the general election that put our generation’s first coalition government into power. More likely perhaps, we’ll associate 2010 with the heinous cuts that Government is now overseeing. We saw a World Cup that was far more successful for many of you than it was for Fabio Capello. We saw paywalls built around some of our mainstream newspapers’ digital offerings for the first time. We saw the launch of a new national newspaper. We glimpsed the future with the launch of the iPad in the same year as television and traditional media “bit back” against the onslaught of new technology and reinforced its power to help build brands, according to Sir Martin Sorrell.

Why not demonstrate your success in 2010 to our growing international audience of senior brand marketers. And come and celebrate your year of innovation, creativity, engagement and growth at the industry’s biggest party. You can enter the 2011 Engage Awards now by visiting www.marketingweekawards.co.uk