Hat Media has won two 2025 Asia-Pacific Stevie® Awards, taking out Most Innovative Marketing or Advertising Professional of the Year and Thought Leader of the Year. We're honoured, and we're still a little stunned.

Awards are a strange thing to write about. You either undersell them and look falsely modest, or you oversell them and lose the room. So, the honest version — this one matters because of what the two categories sit on top of, which is a decade of work with clients who were willing to try something before it was obvious.

A celebration of regional innovation

The Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards are the only business awards program that recognises workplace innovation across all 29 markets of the Asia-Pacific region. The Stevies take their name from the Greek word for "crowned", and they've honoured business achievement for more than two decades through programs like The International Business Awards®.

This year the program received more than 1,000 nominations across categories including Innovation in Products & Services, Corporate Websites, and Management. Winners were decided by the average scores of over 100 executives judging through February and March. Two wins out of a field that size — we're not treating that lightly.

"The 12th Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards received an impressive array of outstanding entries," said Maggie Miller, President of the Stevie Awards. "This year's winners have clearly shown their dedication to innovation, and we commend their resilience and imaginative efforts. We're excited to honor many of them at our awards ceremony on 13 May."

The ceremony runs in Seoul, South Korea.

Innovation with purpose

Innovation has never been about trend-chasing for us, and it isn't about disruption for its own sake. So what is it? Creating value you can point at — through data, creativity and strategy — whether we're launching a campaign, building a tech stack, or helping a founder find their market footing.

Joana Inch, our Co-Founder, has worked to that ethos from the start. Her leadership has shaped Hat Media's move from a digital agency into one of Australia's leading B2B strategy partners for SaaS enterprises. She was pioneering account-based marketing in Australia when most of the market still called it a fad — and she's spent the years since designing integrated demand generation programs for clients like Lenovo.

The Lenovo campaign is the clearest example of what that looks like when it lands:

1. $66 million in revenue in 12 months
2. A 30% increase in subscribers
3. A 35% email open rate, 13 points above the industry average
4. Influencer-authored content and organic mentions from global brands including Xerox
5. Recognition from LinkedIn as a Top 1% content marketing site globally
6. Finalist placement in the mUmBRELLA Asia Awards

Not bad for a category everyone told us was a fad.

Recognising real leadership

Thought Leader of the Year is the one that lands differently. Thought leadership isn't about having opinions — the market has plenty of those already. It's about contributing something useful often enough that people start planning around it. How do you know when you've got there? People quote you back to yourself.

Joana has become a trusted voice in SaaS and B2B marketing the slow way. She hosts the SaaS Stories podcast, which grew streams by over 750% in 2024, and she's written two books, Go To Market, an Amazon bestseller, and the recently released Account-Based Playbook. Her speaking work runs through Microsoft Reactor, HubSpot and Women's Agenda. She's been featured in Balance the Grind, The Marketer and CMO, now Foundry. And she's turned up as a guest on DevReady, Paris Talks Marketing and SaaS Sessions.

None of that was a campaign. It accumulated.

As Joana puts it:

"Being recognised in these two categories is an incredible honour, but what excites me is what it represents, a growing appetite for smarter, more human-centred marketing. Our clients are thinking more strategically, more creatively, and more courageously than ever before. These awards are a celebration of them just as much as us."

Gratitude to our community

These are shared wins — they belong to the clients who trusted us to take a bold leap, the partners who collaborate generously, and the team who show up with curiosity and grit.

To our clients, you're the reason we think long-term. To the B2B marketers reading this, you keep raising the bar and reminding us that the learning never stops.

If you want the thinking behind the work rather than the trophy cabinet, the SaaS Stories podcast is where most of it gets tested first, one founder at a time.