2025 Startups 100 | Advertising Award Winner & Shortlist 

Gone are the ‘Mad Males’ days of advertising and marketing a enterprise. When the buyer mindset adjustments day by day, manufacturers want greater than a billboard to seize their consideration — as our Startups 100 Advertising Award winner, and our three nominees, illustrate. 

Additionally featured in our 2025 Startups 100, these 4 fast-growth startups are writing the way forward for advertising and marketing. Transferring away from conventional promoting, they’ve every adopted a novel technique to construct an viewers of tens of millions, each on-line and offline, in lower than 5 years. 

Wish to know what life appears like after Google? Learn on to find which firm we picked as our winner, and uncover what enterprise advertising and marketing appears like in 2025.

WINNER – Runna

Runna’s conquering of the health sector is notable when you think about how aggressive the house is. Once you’re going up towards manufacturers equivalent to Nike, the race to market domination appears gained. However what Runna lacked in measurement, it has made up for in advertising and marketing ways.

The model has leveraged influencers to earn the belief of the UK operating group. Its personalised exercises have been designed by massive names equivalent to ultra-athlete Joshua Patterson, Olympic marathoner Stephanie Davis, and World Triathlete Champion, Alex Yee.

Runna has even managed to run on water. It went throughout the pond in 2024 to offer unique plans for these coaching for the New York Marathon. And, by complementing extra elite partnerships with beloved shopper manufacturers like Lululemon, Runna has been capable of goal a broad viewers of differing health ranges, to construct a loyal following of over 300k. 

Different canny model partnerships have adopted. Final June, it coupled up with Tinder to launch SoleMates Run Golf equipment, including additional worth for patrons and serving to to develop its userbase via natural, phrase of mouth referrals. 

We are able to barely sustain with Runna’s operating mates. Simply over per week in the past, it additionally turned the official digital health associate of (what else?) parkrun UK, a free, 5k operating, jogging, or strolling occasion for communities throughout the UK.

Runna now counts a whole lot of 1000’s of customers in 180 nations. It’s within the high ten for our general Startups 100 Index, and the app’s compelling mix of influencer partnerships and group constructing makes it a deserved first-place finisher for our 2025 Advertising Award.

SHORTLISTED – SURREAL Cereal

Discovering your tone of voice is a vital a part of any advertising and marketing plan. If anybody is in search of inspiration, look to SURREAL. On the field, it’s high-protein variations of your favorite childhood cereal manufacturers. However its cheeky model persona has made it a lot extra.

Since successful the Simply Began award two years in the past, SURREAL has stunned audiences on social media. Its provocative entrepreneurs have poked enjoyable at their “boring” finance crew and gained us over with their clear makes an attempt to promote, promote, promote (“ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO SELL CEREAL” reads one among its newest LinkedIn posts).

We’re specific followers of its current collaboration with GymShark, a pure associate for SURREAL’s fitness-foodie target market. SURREAL teamed up with the model to make Cardi-Os excessive protein cereal which prospects needed to squat to choose up. Simply kidding.

Via these disruptive stunts SURREAL has managed to face out on one of many stalest cabinets in supermarkets. It’s earned over 200k social followers and introduced pleasure again to British breakfasts (now please don’t make enjoyable of us, SURREAL’s advertising and marketing crew).

SHORTLISTED – Tonic Well being

Shopper schooling is without doubt one of the greatest challenges for well being manufacturers. You’ll be able to’t repair an issue that your audiences don’t find out about. That’s why Tonic Well being founder Sunna van Kampen determined to construct a trusted platform first, and a vitamin model second.

Chances are you’ll recognise van Kampen from social media platforms, the place he has over a million followers at present, and averages 45 million views monthly. He started by visiting native supermarkets and highlighting the excessive ranges of sugar and ultra-processed meals (UPFs) in a few of the greatest family manufacturers in your fridge, from yoghurt drinks to ketchup sauce. 

These journalistic-style clips rapidly went viral throughout Instagram and TikTok and have now racked up tens of millions of views. That, in flip, has offered the right platform to advertise Tonic Well being’s pure vitamin drinks and gummies.

In an period of misinformation, van Kampen is a refreshing proposition for patrons. Having positioned himself because the Martyn Lewis of well being dietary supplements, Tonic Well being is a deserved nominee for our Advertising Award, and an instance of private branding at its finest. 

SHORTLISTED – Financielle

Financielle is one other model that has made shopper schooling its mission assertion. Particularly, addressing the monetary literacy hole for girls who, due to the motherhood penalty, typically have much less in financial savings and pensions once they attain retirement.

Recognising how intimidatingly advanced cash administration may be, Financielle has made use of a comparatively new medium to translate its content material into an easy-to-absorb format: podcasts. Each week, the founders sit down for a sofa-style chat about the right way to higher handle your financial savings for the Financielle podcast, referred to as ‘The Vault’. 

Every episode is filmed and changed into bitesize movies for TikTok. Viewers are invited to put in writing in with their very own monetary conundrums, turning complicated eventualities about inheritance tax and automotive financing into pleasant anecdotes that may be extra simply defined.

Financielle’s trusted model identification has clearly chimed with its viewers. It was voted App of the Day by Apple twice and has grown a following of 200k. By utilizing human-led, user-generated content material to promote monetary companies, the app gives the best case research for a way in the present day’s manufacturers can attain new audiences via natural, multi-channel means.

Click on beneath to find the nominees and winners for our different Startups 100 awards:

🌎 Startups 100 Sustainability Award 2025
♿ Startups 100 DEI Award 2025
💝 Startups 100 Social Influence Award 2025