The hybrid awards ceremony, which took place on Tues (22 June) and was attended by an audience of over 150 people, saw success for the team behind the literacy campaign ‘Turn on the Subtitles’.
The campaign aimed to get the message across that turning on the TV subtitles can double the chances of a child becoming good at reading. It targeted parents, broadcasters, and programme providers.
Launched on World Book Day in March 2021 with a budget of £1,000, the campaign was started by two British entrepreneurs, Henry Warren and Oli Barrett, who managed to persuade celebrities including Stephen Fry, Sandi Toksvig, and Lenny Henry to lend support.
The campaign was chosen as the winner from 47 entries to this year’s Innovation Excellence Awards. Jill Jones, an independent non-executive director within the EdTech and publishing sectors, was chair of the judges’ panel.
She said: “In January it was clear that innovation was being stimulated as a result of the global crisis, but the quality, and number, of entries for the awards outstripped our expectations.
“Variety was married with really strong social benefit themes around delivering innovation to address customer need, community building and collaboration, diversity, inclusion, attention to environmental impact, and customer and employee safety.”
‘Turn on the Subtitles’ was also the winner of the Award for Communications including Marketing category.
The Award for Business Process went to Troika Systems for its AniCam HD product, which monitors and measures anilox 3D volumetric and cell geometry results, while the Award for Customer Experience went to Class Professional Publishing for Para Pass, an app which supports paramedic learning and development.
World Textile Information Network won the Award for Service Development for WTiN Discovery, which harnesses technology artificial learning and machine learning to help readers discover content faster and uncover data and trends that may have passed them by if they were not using the tools.
Kogan Page won the Award for Product Design for its Kogan Page Accessible Ebooks programme, which puts books into a useful and accessible format for all readers, including those who are blind, cognitively impaired, have low vision or are otherwise impaired.
The Award for Start-Ups went to Trust Elevate for making the internet a safer place for children with a system that securely verifies the age or identity of users under the age of 16 via their telecommunications company, using anonymous tokens.
Finally Renz UK won the Pandemic Response Exceptional Performance Award, which saw all entries reviewed again to recognise outstanding achievement in adapting to the coronavirus pandemic.
While Renz UK entered the awards with its Air2Color product, for which it was awarded a Stationers’ Warrants last week, judges were particularly impressed by the company’s significant response to quickly pivot to produce quality PPE and other office supplies for managing business in a Covid environment.
