Within the beauty industry, no start-up or brand can become successful on its own, with every company needing a strong team in order to thrive. However, at times, several team members and essential industry contributors are overlooked. As a result, BeautyMatter's inaugural NEXT Awards are set to raise the bar and define the future of beauty, ensuring a level playing field for the best pioneers of beauty.
Created to celebrate an industry that has supported BeautyMatter's efforts over the past six years, the NEXT Awards are open to everyone, welcoming the largest multinationals to high-growth indies and brands to suppliers.
"Launching our version of awards has always been part of our master plan, and it's something we have been ideating around for some time," says Kelly Kovack, founder and CEO of BeautyMatter. "We have evolved from a test-and-learn approach to being a bit more strategic with new concepts to ensure we have the ability to scale an idea once it's launched. The nudge to launch this year really came from repeated requests from our BeautyMatter community and the fact that we have nearly doubled our team, so we have the bandwidth."
Across the initiative, there are six award categories, and within each category, several awards are up for grabs. "We gave a lot of thought to framing all the ideas we had for potential awards," Kovack continues. "We finally landed on building awards into the buckets of Visionaries (people), Impact (actions), Design/Marketing, Retail, Innovation, Agencies, and Solution Providers/Suppliers. As an industry, we are hyper-focused on newness. While recency is important in some categories, it is not in others. For instance, when a technology or impact initiative launches an idea, it takes time to validate the effect and success. For this reason, we do not have a time frame attached to these awards because new doesn't always mean better."
The application process is streamlined for efficiency, with the option for submitting photos or videos to add dimension to the entry. “There is very literally an award for everyone that does business in the beauty industry, and if we missed anything, we will add categories next year," says Kovack. "I think candidates need to take the time to articulate why they are worthy of winning the award they are submitting and backing up claims with substantiation."
Award winners will be selected by an assembly of prestigious judges committed to transparency and impartiality, chosen based on their diversity of experience, deep category knowledge, and insatiable curiosity. Judges range from individuals such as Lorna Dragon, The Estée Lauder Companies, Executive Director 360 Creative Design & Innovation Lead, to Andrew Dent, Material ConneXion | Sandow, Executive Vice President of Research and Chief Material Scientist, and many more. The assembled panel of judges are independent, and once submission closes, they will review the entries and recuse themselves from any awards where they have an affiliation.
Each entry will be judged based on their impact on the beauty industry, as well as originality and relevance, timeliness and innovation, cultural and business impact, design concept and execution, creative use of new materials and components of decoration, technical competency and ingenuity, and effective brand messaging and shelf or display impact. Entrants will have the chance to become a member of the BeautyMatter community, be featured editorially on BeautyMatter, be seen and evaluated by industry leaders, and gain the BeautyMatter seal of approval.
Winners will receive a trophy designed by award-winning design studio BLKBOX, as well as: a NEXT Awards winners badge; a complimentary ticket to the BeautyMatter NEXT Summit: The Future of Beauty; an annual professional membership to BeautyMatter; and exposure across BeautyMatter email marketing and social media. Rewards are not only for the winners; finalists will also receive a NEXT Awards seal, one annual premium membership to BeautyMatter, and exposure across company email marketing and social media.
"With everything we do, our first goal is how do we bring value to our community, and our second objective is finding whitespace either in opportunity or approach. There is no shortage of awards for brands and products that are done very well. Our hope with the NEXT Awards is that we provide a level playing field, a transparent process, and opportunities to honor the achievements of our entire community, representing the beauty industry's ecosystem,” Kovack states.
Entries for the BeautyMatter Next Awards may be submitted by agencies on behalf of clients, with the final entry deadline being July 28, 2022. Winners will be announced on September 15, 2022, at the BeautyMatter NEXT Summit: The Future of Beauty in Los Angeles, CA. Find out more here.
