Every two years the leadership of the APG is enhanced with a new Chair. At the end of 2025 we said farewell to Emily Harlock and Martin Beverley, the first co-chairs of the APG, who for the last two years have been both inspiring and brilliant to work with.

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I am delighted to announce that we have once again appointed co-Chairs. The new Chairs of the APG for 2026/7 are Jo Arden and Tom Roach. 

This is a good one for Planners and strategists. It’s a chance to showcase a campaign that you’ve worked on that encourages the nation to take steps to improve mental health in small, manageable ways.

The awards are designed to show the power of bold, creative TV campaigns and there’s £1million in airtime to be awarded, so it’s quite a prize. Entries are now open for the second instalment of ITV's Head First Award - an advertiser-facing initiative designed to shine a spotlight on mental wellbeing and inspire action through the power of TV advertising.

For all the details on how to enter, the competition timeline, judging criteria and much more, you can download the competition Briefing Pack from the ITV Media website.

It was the strategy mash-up of the year. We brought back 7 of the winners from the APG Awards to battle it out in front of a live audience in the cinema at Channel 4.

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Each winner gave a 5-minute presentation of their thinking and then had one minute to persuade the planners in the room, and on livestream, to vote for their pitch to represent the 'tastiest' flavour of strategy.  MC David Wilding whipped the audience into a frenzy of expectation and free flowing Quality Street and Liora Ingram skipped away with the prize for advocating ‘keeping it honest and real' for Pot Noodle.

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You can watch the film of the evening, including all the speeches and some masterful mc’ing by David Wilding in a sparkly jacket. Oh, and there’s a clown and a couple of blokes in boiler suits. It is nearly Xmas after all.

WARC's John Bizzell goes behind the APG Grand Prix-winning campaign for a car that either sends you to sleep OR into raptures: the Skoda Octavia. Joe Crust, Strategy Director at Leo Burnett UK, takes us behind the scenes.

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Listen here or click below to watch the interview.

We have several training courses scheduled for the first half of the year and spots are filling fast. For questions or to register, please contact Alison - Alison@apg.org.uk

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Strategy Director Excellence Programme

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Answer your Briefs Brilliantly with AI

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Nailing Your Strategy

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Planning Fundamentals​​

‘’I know” said Tom. Let’s call it ‘every flavour of strategy’.

It was the end of a long session in which Tom Roach (Chair of Judges) and I were mulling over how to position the APG Creative Strategy Awards. 

We wanted to open out the awards and welcome seriously fresh thinking and innovative strategies, including different disciplines from PR to brand via one-to-one, diverse strategy models and the myriad channels now available. 

Reading that sentence you can see why we were having the conversation. 

I hesitate to begin this write-up with a negative, but I think I could make a reasonable bet that most planners and strategists would not put measurement and effectiveness at the top of their favourite ‘Planning Things To Do’ list.

It’s easy to shunt what seem like the difficult, data heavy aspects of Planning to another day, especially if you prefer the creative thinking aspects of the job and all the mental and imaginative stimulation that these can deliver.

This was the impetus for Noisy Thinking. Precisely to try and show that the whole game of measurement can be as rich and varied and interesting as brief writing and creative development if you have the right mindset and a suite of engaging tools and ways of thinking at your disposal...

Watch the recording of Canvas8's reflections on the trends and cultural moments of 2025 that had a genuine impact.

Their editors have distilled them into eight awards. From brands to products to people, they aim to map out exactly how and why these zeitgeist makers became the standout stars of the year.​