Winning a Prolific North Champions Award gave independent creative studio Adam + Gary more than a moment in the spotlight. According to them, it helped shape the agency’s direction and opened doors to new opportunities.
The agency was named New Agency to Watch at the 2025 Prolific North Champions Awards, a result co-founder Gary Bannister-Simm admits came as a genuine surprise on the night.
“It’s the classic tale – as a small indie your focus is entirely on your live projects and ‘what’s next’ with little time for reflection – especially in the early days!” he said. “When we picked up the ‘New Agency to Watch award (which was genuinely such a surprise, as you could tell from our faces on the night) it finally gave us a reason to pause for a moment and look back at how far we’d come such a short space of time.”
The win quickly became more than a chance to reflect on progress. “It ended up being so much more than just a reflective moment for us though,” he said. “The award win, the judges’ kind comments, and chats with other agencies at the live ceremony all ended up feeding into an updated strategy that we’ve implemented over the past year and has really helped with our continued success.”
Bannister-Simm said the impact was also felt externally, with the recognition helping to raise the agency’s profile among potential collaborators and clients.
“So, it’s been interesting… over the past year we’ve had a crazy number of conversations with brands, agencies and producers that have opened with ‘We’ve been wanting to work with you guys for ages…’ so it’s hard not to draw parallels between that, and winning the award – it seems like it almost helped ‘legitimise’ adam+gary and push potential clients into reaching out, and has resulted in us working on some awesome new projects with some ace people.”
With entries now open for the 2026 Prolific North Champions Awards, Gary believes smaller agencies should not hesitate to put themselves forward.
“At its core, the Champions Awards are a fantastic opportunity to showcase your business and campaigns to an esteemed panel of judges that are all rooting for businesses in the North… and given how the categories are structured, it doesn’t matter how big you are (there’s literally 2 of us) – if you’re doing amazing things, you’re in with a chance, and we’ve seen genuine positive returns from our win.”
He added that even those who do not win can still benefit from the process and the event itself.
“Worse case, you get to highlight and celebrate your successes with your team at a lavish awards show (with some brilliant networking opportunities), surrounded by your peers, with everyone cheering you on. Still sounds pretty good to us!”
Enter the 2026 Champions Awards here.
