PRESS RELEASES
ASI Media Celebrates National and International Awards for Excellence
Honors reflect ASI’s commitment to delivering top-tier content across reporting, research and multimedia storytelling
“Our team’s dedication to excellence reflects an unmatched ability to craft impactful content across multiple platforms that helps educate, inspire and inform the promo industry.” - said Michele Bell
The Advertising Specialty Institute® (ASI), the premier technology, marketing and information provider in the $26.1 billion promotional products industry, today announced
a series of prestigious award wins for ASI Media staff. The honors recognized ASI’s detailed reporting on a DEI controversy, comprehensive research analysis on the state of the promo industry and creativity in design, photography and video.
“Our team’s dedication to excellence reflects an unmatched ability to craft impactful content across multiple platforms that helps educate, inspire and inform the promo industry,” said Michele Bell, senior vice president of content and global alliances. “We couldn’t be more thrilled with these recognitions.”
The honors include a national Jesse H. Neal Award for journalism excellence, four national Azbee Awards of Excellence and an international Hermes Creative Award. Here’s the 2024 awards breakdown:
Neal Awards: Considered the “Pulitzer Prize” of B2B journalism, recognizing winning reporting on major industry issues and pressing business challenges while helping guide industry leaders to higher levels of effectiveness. Winners were chosen from among publications like Ad Age, Bloomberg Industry Group and Crain Communications.
- Best DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) Coverage: To Editor-in-Chief C.J. Mittica and Digital Art Director Hillary Glen for “Controversy, Gay Pride, Corporate Control – and the Hockey Jersey at the Center of the Storm,” delving into the fallout over NHL players’ refusal to wear specially designed Pride warm-ups.
- In addition, Executive Editor of Digital Content Theresa Hegel earned a Neal nomination for “Best Range of Work by A Single Author” and Digital News Director Christopher Ruvo earned a nomination for “Best Industry Coverage.”
National Azbee Awards of Excellence: Given by the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE), with over 900 entries across 61 categories in one of the nation’s most competitive B2B contests. ASI competed against print and digital media like Bloomberg Industry Group, American Bar Association and WebMD.
Gold Azbee awards:
- Design: Front Cover/Photo, for the Apparel Issue, to Glen and photographer Sean Bolton.
- Print: State of the Industry, Counselor 2023 State of the Industry, to Counselor staff for reporting and analysis on the promo industry’s comeback from COVID-19, packed with exclusive statistics and strategies to help distributors inform and improve their business.
Bronze Azbee awards:
- Design: Web Article Design, for “Is Promo Ready for the AI Revolution?” to Glen and Hegel.
- Design: Print Article Design, for “Parade of Decades,” to Glen, Bolton and Hegel.
- ASI Media also won five Gold awards in ASBPE’s Mid-Atlantic Regional competition.
International Hermes Creative Awards, a competition for creative professionals involved in the concept, writing and design of traditional and emerging media.
- Gold Award to Dawn Shurmaitis, corporate communications executive director, and Jake Krolick, marketing design executive creative director, for the corporate video “We Are ASI: Dedicated to Your Success.”
- Honorable mention also went to Shurmaitis and Krolick for the video “Tim’s Blooper Reel” and to Shurmaitis and Bell for creative writing on the ASI Careers web page.
ASI has won 24 Neal Awards and 54 Neal finalist awards over the years, and ASI Media is the only industry media entity to ever win a national Neal award. To date, ASI Media has earned a total of 353 journalism awards.
For more information on ASI Media, please contact Michele Bell at mbell@asicentral.com. Find ASI’s breaking news, in-depth reporting, research reports, podcasts and videos at asicentral.com/news and asicentral.com/research.
