The winners of this year’s categories – including Agency of the Year and Best Place to Work – will be announced during a virtual ceremony for the MRS Awards 2021 on 6th December 2021.

The finalists are:

Agency of the Year (sponsored by GlobaLexicon)
Basis
Blue Yonder
IFF Research
MTM
Opinium
Truth Consulting
Verve

Best Place to Work (sponsored by KoganPage)
Empower Translate
IFF Research
Lucid
One Minute to Midnight
Opinium
PwC Research
Zappi

In-house Team of the Year
BT
The Football Association (FA)
Herbalife Nutrition
Reckitt Hygiene UK I&A Team
Transport Focus

Innovation of the Year
Big Sofa Technologies
Lumen
Measure Protocol

Best New Venture
Basis Social
Opinium

Business Impact of the Year – Global
Discover.ai and Pepsico
GlaxoSmithKline and Freemavens
Jaguar Land Rover and Northstar Research
Reckitt and Walnut Unlimited
Research Strategy Group
Shell and Kantar

Business Impact of the Year – UK (sponsored by The Marketing Society)
BBC
The Co-op
Emotional Logic and Centre:mk
Kantar and Nationwide
Strat7 ResearchBods and Asda
Truth and Vodafone

Young Researcher of the Year – Client (sponsored by Opinium)
Emily Gribble, BT
Matt Walker, The Co-op

Young Researcher of the Year – Supplier (sponsored by IFF Research)
Alex Bennett-Clemmow, Humankind Research
Matt Hellon, Northstar Research
Sophie Holland, Opinium
Hannah Kirk, Blue Yonder
Mary Lumley, Kantar
Ande Milinyte, Opinium
Mary Suffield, Kantar Public
Amelia Wallis, Lumen

The main judges for the Research Live Awards were:

• Christina Finlay, director, data and analytics at Nest
• Celia Fraser, insights and analytics lead at Capital Group
• Catherine Haigh, head of consumer insight Europe, Middle East and Africa at McCormick
• James Holden, director of marketing and audiences at BBC News Group
• Seema Hope, global customer insight director at Dennis Publishing
• Elaine Rodrigo, chief insights and analytics officer at Reckitt Benckiser
• Jake Steadman, global vice-president of insights at Access Intelligence
• Mike Taylor, group head of insights at Vodafone
• Katie McQuater, editor Research Live and Impact (chair).

In addition, finalists for Innovation of the Year took part in a Dragon’s Den-style panel with a separate judging team.

Judges for the Innovation of the Year award included: McQuater; Steadman; Jessica Salmon, B2C co-lead at Virgin Media O2, Telefonica; Harry Davies, head of sales data science and analytics – Google Cloud Europe, Middle East and Africa at Google; and Liam Kay, deputy editor at Research Live and Impact.

A full list of MRS Awards 2021 finalists can be found here.