BRAND GEM AWARD

The ANA Brand GEM Award will honor the top creative and impactful work
that exemplifies the best in class accurate and authentic portrayal of women and/or girls
across brand marketing campaigns.

Women represent a significant growth opportunity for brands, and marketing that authentically reflects their experiences can help brands build stronger connections and unlock that potential.

The ANA Cultural Leadership Alliance (ACLA), the leadership division of the ANA Cultural Marketing Center of Excellence, created the ANA Brand GEM® Award to recognize marketers and creative teams putting this opportunity into practice—developing work that authentically and accurately portrays women and girls and demonstrates the power of cultural resonance to drive brand and business growth.

The award is open to all Masters of Marketing Brand Awards applicants.

Congratulations to the 2026 Brand GEM Award Winners

  • Gold: Make it With Wahl 2025 by Wahl Clipper Corporation with Chop & Hue
  • Silver: CARE, Always There by CARE
  • Bronze: State Farm Basketball From the Logos by State Farm and Highdive

 

Brand GEM Award Eligibility

Any submission submitted for the Masters of Marketing Brand Awards may also be entered for the Brand GEM Award. A simple check box is available in the entry system to have your submission(s) considered for this award. Only the highest scoring submissions within their main Brand Award category(s) in the Brand Awards main round of judging will be contenders for an Brand GEM Award. Brand GEM Award finalist submissions will have their creative work go through the GEM® creative testing process to determine the top 3 contenders achieving the highest GEM® scores, and ultimately the winners.

Brand GEM Award winners will be awarded at the 2027 ANA Masters of Marketing Brand Awards Gala on May 18, 2027, at the ANA Brand Masters Conference in San Diego, CA.

Brand GEM® Awards category finalists received a full GEM® Report on their submission(s) which will provide insight into the key themes and drivers of their GEM® Score.

Currently GEM® testing is available to ANA Cultural Leadership Alliance member companies, and will be made available to ANA members on a limited basis, however, this is an exclusive opportunity for Masters of Marketing Brand Award entrants to obtain a complete GEM® analysis at a fraction of the cost, regardless of their membership status.

Creative Requirements:

  • All executions must include women and/or girls (animated/virtual humans not applicable) 
  • Any type of creative (print, display, video, etc), for any platform (linear, digital, or social) is acceptable, however VIDEO creative is strongly recommended. Single, isolated, stand-alone unique full-form execution(s) as it ran in market - as the target audience experienced it - is required.  (Edited versions, compilation/sizzle/case study reels are not acceptable)
  • For video submissions, each individual video creative example must not exceed two minutes.
  • Up to 2 examples are allowed

Fee
There is a flat fee of $350 per submission into the ANA Brand GEM specialty category.

GEM® Background

GEM® was developed and launched in 2016 by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and Advertising Benchmark Index (ABX), in partnership with The Female Quotient (TFQ)'s SeeHer movement (SeeHer is formerly a division of the ANA, now part of the ANA Cultural Leadership Alliance) an unprecedented coalition of marketers, agencies, and media companies harnessing the collective power of the entire marketing and media ecosystem to unlock growth by tapping into the economic power of women and set a new industry standards for female representation, portrayal and resonance.

The Gender Equality Measure (GEM®), is the first research methodology that quantifies the effectiveness of representation and portrayals in advertising. High GEM® scoring ads drive sales by up to 10x compared to low GEM® scording ads.

GEM® has become the global gold standard, measuring over 500,000 ads in markets that represented 90% of worldwide ad spend.