Top Banana are delighted to announce that we were announced as winners of the Rapid Response Team award at the Conference News Agency Awards 2021.
The awards ceremony was hosted on the 22nd of July 2021 at Tobacco Dock London, with the industry coming together for the first time in a very long time. The Rapid Response Team Award was a new category for 2021 and aimed to recognise agencies that managed to quickly adapt and respond their services, offering and team during the global pandemic in 2020.
Richard Bridge, Founder and CEO of Top Banana, who successfully led the business through one of the most challenging and unpredictable times, comments “As industry leaders, we are proud to be one of the first agencies to adapt our expert offering into the virtual world. Digital was already a big part of our journey as an agency, but the pandemic forced us to accelerate our focus within this area. The initial silence meant a huge amount of time was dedicated to revolutionising our virtual event offering. Our technology means there are no longer creative limitations, only opportunities for us to engage audiences from anywhere in the world. We now see virtual events, not just as a temporary fix, but a method of communication that is here to stay.”
Jemma Peers, Managing Director, contributes “Whilst the past 18 months have been a challenging time in many ways, we are really proud of how our team embraced the change, overcame the challenges, and continued to deliver outstanding work for our clients. Many of our employees had to take on extra responsibility and upskill in different areas quite quickly. We were really impressed at how they adapted, rolled up their sleeves and did what they had to go to keep the business going. We couldn’t have done it without their hard work, dedication, and motivation.”
Without Top Banana, we’d have lost considerable momentum during the pandemic. At first, we went into survival mode, working out what our future might look like. But when the government revealed in June that social distancing measures were being lifted, shops were re-opening etc. we knew it was time to revive our workforce. That’s when we went to Top Banana, and in 5 weeks they created our most engaging, well received ‘mini sales kick off’ to date. They act as an extended member of our team and have bought our events to life online so well, delegates are now asking if they can engage with us in this format moving forwards. From June to now, they have developed their offering significantly and every time we return, the team are thinking outside the box for different ways to connect with our employees. There are no limitations, only possibilities, and despite the pressure of knowing the results our face-to-face events deliver, they continue to push boundaries and challenge us to try new creative ways of engagement.
Rob Orr, Executive Director at Virgin Media
A huge congratulations to all of the winners and shortlisted agencies.