#ShearExcellence: The 2019 MOST Awards winners

The 11^th annual MOST Awards continued its proud tradition of celebrating excellence in the media industry. A record number of respondents delivered their votes via the online survey this year.

At a breathtaking awards evening, held at The Wanderers Club in Illovo, the best of the best were recognised and awarded by their peers.

Media Owner and Media Agency of the Year

It was a dual win for AdColony, who scooped the coveted Media Owner of the Year accolade as well as being named the Digital category winner, for the second year in a row. This media owner has built a significant gap between itself and its competitors from a MOST Awards perspective.

Media24 must be commended for its admirable performance in this year’s MOST Awards, with Media24 Lifestyle and Ads24 placing second and third respectively in the overall Media Owner of the Year rankings. Both also came out top in their categories (magazines and newspapers respectively) and Ads24 made it a double by winning the Media Owner Marketing Services Award as well.

Unsurprisingly, The MediaShop (Johannesburg) came out on top once again, its seventh overall win in 10 years. In 2019 it saw a dual win, picking up the Media Agency of the Year title and topping the Full Service Media Agency rankings. What was surprising was the dominance of Park Advertising, which picked up not only the top spot, but second and third places too, with The MediaShop (Cape Town) and Meta Media (Johannesburg) respectively.

Individual MOST Award winners

2019 was the year of women in the MOST Awards, with six of the seven individual awards being won by them.

Google’s agency relationship manager in South Africa, Kerri Prissman, was named this year’s Media Owner Rising Star, while DStv Media Sales’ CEO Fahmeeda Cassim-Surtee is the Media Owner Legend Award winner.

On the agency side, OMD’s Julio Rodrigues won the Media Agency Rising Star Award, and Dentsu Aegis Network’s Dawn Rowlands is worthy the winner of the Media Agency Legend Award.

For her selfless contributions to media research, Brenda Wortley was awarded the Shepherd Award. And in a first for the MOST Awards, there was a joint winner of the Bell Award. Clare O’Neil and Jennifer Daniel shared the accolade.

Category award winners

This year’s MOST Awards categories saw many interesting moves, with some companies retaining their top spot from last year, some new winners, and some surprises.

Here are the various category winners:

Media owner

Radio – Primedia Broadcasting

2^nd – Mediamark

3^rd – United Stations

Television – e.tv

2^nd – DStv Media Sales

3^rd – Viacom

Cinema – Ster-Kinekor Sales

2^nd – Cinevation Popcorn

Out-of-home – Relativ Media

2^nd – Primedia Outdoor

3^rd – Wideopen Platform

Newspapers – Ads24

2^nd – Tiso Blackstar Media

3^rd – The Citizen

Magazines – Media24 Lifestyle

2^nd – Caxton Magazines

Digital – AdColony

2^nd – Google

3^rd – The SpaceStation

Media Sales Consultants – Ad Dynamo

2^nd – Vicinity Media

Media Owner Lamb – Exponential Media

2^nd – Mediamark (digital)

3^rd – Massiv Media (OOH)

Media Owner Marketing Services – Ads24

2^nd – Mediamark

3^rd – DStv Media Sales

Media agencies

Media Agency Lamb – Initiative Media (Cape Town)

2^nd – FCB Africa

3^rd – Carat (Cape Town)

Specialist Media Agency – Alphabet Soup

2^nd – Posterscope

3^rd – TMI Media

Full Service Media Agency – The MediaShop (Johannesburg)

2^nd – The MediaShop (Cape Town)

3^rd – Meta Media (Johannesburg)

Check back to The Media Online on Wednesday morning for more news, photographs and videos from #MOSTAwards2019