Is UK brand film the world leader?

New York Festivals finalists have been announced and the awards gala is coming up on 10th April at NAB in Las Vegas. We’ve had a look at the finalists to figure out which brand video producers have performed best so far.

The strength of these awards is their world-wide appeal. The ‘International’ part of the title is absolutely justified - 42 countries appear in the shortlist. We’ve tweaked that figure to 40 as we have included Scotland and Wales as part of the United Kingdom, with a respectful nod to the independence movements in both nations.

USA leads - or does it?

The USA leads the field with 134 shortlisted entries followed by Singapore (83), the UK (71) and Germany (55). It’s a credit to Singapore’s development as a media hub that it performs so strongly.

But the New York Festivals accept a large number of broadcast projects so we discounted them and focused on brand film projects. This changes the picture dramatically.

UK entrants win by a mile with 39 nominations in 14 categories. Japan (10), Germany (nine) and The Netherlands (six) lead the rest.

A special mention goes to Iran and Peru with two brand films each among the finalists:  Your Story is Our Story by Pakshoo Industrial Group and two tourism films by the Comisión Promoción del Perú para la Export y el Turismo.

UK producers rock

Once again The Edge are the standout finalists with no fewer than 20 nominations, far more than any other corporate producer world-wide. UK finalists dominate the shortlist for the Public Relations and Internal Use categories.

There are 10 companies and 14 categories among the UK finalists, including PSONA Films (3), Radley Yeldar (3), MerchantCantos (3), Quite Frankly (3), Buddy/WeAreFearless (2), Belong (1), Animage Films (1), Embolden (1) and drp (1). Surprisingly, there are no entries directly from in-house teams.

So does this mean the UK is the world’s leading market for brand video? There’s no denying that British entrants have traditionally prospered in New York, and their brand film work shines on the global stage.

The results could be skewed by the high profile of the New York Festivals scheme in the UK. This probably translates into a lot of entries. We don’t know how many entries were submitted from other leading markets such as Germany. And of course this is just the finalists - the winners have yet to be announced.

But using the data we have, we can be sure British producers get plenty of recognition for brand moving image content.