I am lucky enough to be the guest of Chapple, a search firm I've known for a while.  However, I do approach these gigantic orgies of self-belief with a certain amount of trepidation.  There are just so many awards and so bloody many people.

1,600 by one estimate.

There have been two great awards tonight though. Two that I find quite amusing.  Flic Howard-Allen, H&K's ex-Corporate PR Head, won PR Professional of the Year.  And David Cameron won Communicator of the Year... which caused a bit of a barney at my table... boos in the hall and all. 

Then Shell won the next award and got a great big cheer.

Well.

I think I have had more fun this year than in previous years.  In part because Jeremy Vine did a good job of making it go quickly.  In part because we had a good table.

Ken Hunter, ex of Rolls-Royce, now of EDF; Gillian Tong, of Deutsche Bank; Katarina Auer of AstraZeneca (who forgot to come); my mate Sabine Jaccaud, ex of ABN: and more...

Interestingly enough, H&K got a commendation for International Agency of the Year.  That seems to suggest we are coming back into the fold.

Burson-Marstellar didn't even get a nomination.  Cohn & Wolfe got one nomination and one award.  Weber Shandwick got one nomination and nothing... Which is sad for them, because they've put a lot into their PRWeek relationship.

From an Internal Comms perspective I was disappointed.  Our friends at Harkness Kennett sponsor the IC award but the nominations were dire. ITV won the award.  And they're not really poster-children for how to do this.

But those are the entries that they received.

/df