Emma Wilkie of The Gunn Report Joins The Immortal Awards as Co-Director After Landmark Year for the Show

Global communication platform for the creative industries Little Black Book (LBB), today announces the hire of Emma Wilkie, who will join The Immortal Awards co-director Paul Monan in running the show as it enters its sixth year of competition.

 

Emma started her career in the creative department of DDB London. But it was from 2003 to 2006 that Emma began her pursuit of honouring creative excellence globally. As co-founder of Flaxman Wilkie, she became publisher of The Gunn Report - a retirement project started by the Leo Burnett legend Donald Gunn. From 2007, Emma took a leading hand in transforming the Gunn Report to the globally recognised authority and benchmark for best in class advertising. In 2019 Emma also oversaw The Gunn Report’s transition to new ownership and its relaunch as the WARC Creative 100. 

Emma’s hire comes as The Immortal Awards wraps up its fifth year, a year which returned record numbers of entries, entrant companies and countries represented in the show. Her new role will see Emma use her in-depth knowledge of local, regional and global advertising excellence to strengthen the Immortal Awards’ mission - to reward and recognise only the very best, unforgettable and ‘immortal’ creative advertising.

At LBB, Emma will work closely with the Immortal Award’s co-director Paul Monan on developing and growing the show further. This will involve compiling an unrivalled global jury, spreading the word about its unique free-for-members model, finding partners and increasing entrants and entries worldwide. 

For the past five years the Immortal Awards has toured the world, bringing its ‘Winners Showcase’ to any business and its staff who would benefit from being inspired by the globally best in class work from the previous year. In her career, Emma travelled extensively around the world to present at key industry events and client conferences and will help take the Immortal Awards Winners Showcase tour on the road in 2023.

 

Immortal Awards co-director, Paul Monan comments, “This has been a landmark year for the Immortals. It's our fifth year of competition and it's returned record numbers of entries, entrant companies and countries represented. With the support of some wonderful partners, stellar jurors, our entrants and of course the wider LBB team, we've built an award show with super strong foundations and a real point of difference in our industry. Our aim for the Immortals is to continue developing our World Cup of Advertising style model, so to have someone with Emma's experience come in and help propel the show forward is hugely exciting for me - and a fairly major coup for the Immortals! Together, we'll work to grow the show with our industry partners to keep the Immortals as a relevant, pure celebration of creativity and roll out world class juries in every major market in the world.”

 

Immortal Awards co-director Emma Wilkie comments, “‘As the advertising industry continues to rapidly evolve, it’s more important than ever to rethink how we identify, applaud and award ground-breaking creative ideas. The Immortal Awards has spent its first five years developing a fresh approach and I’m delighted and excited to join Paul at this stage to further progress the creative excellence benchmark designed for the future.”

 

Matt Cooper founder and CEO of LBB added, “I’m over the moon that Emma is joining us to help grow the Immortal Awards. We have built something here that we are immensely proud of - something that is making a real difference to the industry. Paul has directed it for five years and has grown it from day one. We now want it to go a LOT further. The chance to bring Emma in at this stage is just incredible. What she doesn’t know about awards, you could write on the back of a stamp but most importantly her passion for creativity is very real. The opportunity to have her and Paul co-directing The Immortal Awards and its future is more than exciting. Also, having worked with and known Emma for many years, I can also say that she is a bundle of energy and fun. I really believe our industry (and the people working in it) want a bit more of this. Emma will offer a lot to our growing business. Now using all that amazing knowledge she has built up over the years, she’s going to be helping shape an actual award show. That is so cool to me!”