Triple win for John Brown Media South Africa at The Content Council's Pearl Awards

Mindspace, Old Mutual Corporate’s (OMC) thought-leadership magazine produced by JBSA, was awarded gold in the Best Print Experience B2B category for the second year in a row. Designed and curated for business leaders and senior management in South Africa, the content spans economics, politics, business and workplace trends, sustainability and high-level career insights.

The silver award in the same category went to Nine Yards. Launched just before Global Entrepreneurship Week 2020, Nine Yards was the culmination of an almost year-long content campaign JBSA created for OMC that kicked off in April 2020 to support small businesses after South Africa went into lockdown. To talk to readers instead of at them, all contributors, expert voices and interviewees are entrepreneurs with first-hand experience of the SME sector.

“Great content, passion and teamwork lie at the heart of our creative collaboration with Old Mutual Corporate, and we are thrilled to have it recognised by the Pearl Awards judges,” says Kelda Lund, editor on the OMC account at JBSA. “Not only did Mindspace and Nine Yards win gold and silver in the same category, Nine Yards did it on the first try! It is such an honour to end the year with a triple win at the Pearl Awards.”

OMC’s third publication, Today, won silver in the Best Print Experience B2C category. It is a dedicated financial lifestyle magazine with practical guidance, how-tos and stories of real people dealing with everyday financial, career and budgeting issues we all face.

Gugu-Lisa Zwane Johnson, OMC’s executive head: Marketing, Public Affairs and Sustainability, echoed Lund on their success: “These wins at are a result of the great collaboration between ourselves and John Brown Media. In the five years that we’ve been working together, our teams have become truly integrated and constantly build on a shared vision to tell stories which add value to clients and customers. It’s a winning formula.”

A great year for the OMC/JBSA content team

In November, Nine Yards was one of the top performers at the SA Publication Forum Awards where it scooped gold in the Best External Magazine and Best Headlines categories. The judges further voted it runner-up in the Excellence in Writing and Best Publication Design categories.

A week after scooping these awards, Lund received silver in the Editor of the Year category at the international Content Marketing Awards in London.

About the Pearl Awards

The Pearl Awards are awarded each year by The Content Council in New York to celebrate the most innovative and engaging content marketing programmes with the greatest marketing impact. The first Pearl Awards were handed out in 2004, making it the longest-running, most prestigious content marketing awards programme in the United States.