Written by Nicole Webb

I’m just back from six weeks in Europe (I’m telling anyone who will listen). While it was mostly annual leave, I did manage to do some work along the way and one of the pit stops was London to attend the thenetworkone 2025 Indie Awards. 

IMPACT joined thenetworkone last year – we are one of 1,600 independent “best in class” agencies providing advertising, PR, media, digital, events, branding and design services across 120 countries. 

The Indie Awards are a celebration of creativity and strategic thinking coming out of independents. They are the only large-scale international awards designed exclusively for independent agencies across all communications disciplines.  

IMPACT’s work with Modibodi was honoured in 2024 winning the Lifestyle PR category, and our Rheem Apprentice Plumber Grants work was shortlisted in the Best Corporate PR Campaign category this year. We were unfortunately pipped at the post by three incredible campaigns – We Journey Together from Mower in USA for the Arthritis Foundation (Bronze), Fresh Air Beans from CJ Worx in Thiland for PTT Oil and Retail Business PCL (Silver) and Finlands Energy – Wisest School from Kurio in Finland for Caverion. 

Guest speaker at this year’s awards was Heide Cohu, Founder of experiential agency, The Studio of Art & Commerce. Her key takeaway for indies in 2025 is to be brave.  

She previously worked as Global Brand Communications & Media House Director with Red Bull where she worked on Red Bull Stratos project –  the Felix Baumgartner’s record breaking, supersonic free fall from the edge of Space in 2012. While she’s suggesting we all be brave in 2025, persistence also seems to be an attribute for success as the project took over five years to come to fruition.

Prior to the pandemic (and as part of KSA’s Vision 2030) her company created, produced & managed the inaugural MDL Beast – the first-ever EDM (Electronic Dance Music) and arts festival in Saudi Arabia.  

The results speak for themselves: Attendance of 400,000 people, OTS global audience of 2bn, TikTok campaign – the first ever in KSA, reached over 600m people. All this, and the added heartache of a massive sandstorm, just prior to opening!  

Perhaps we should add resilience to that 2025 list of attributes as well?