Today we’ll complete our coverage of the advertising-related categories from INMA’s 2026 Global Media Awards shortlist with a look at the finalists for Best Use of an Event to Build a News Brand. Previously, we covered Best Idea to Grow Advertising Sales or Revenue, Best Revenue Diversification Strategy, and Best Client Advertising Campaign.

The 10 finalists across five regional/local and five national/international brands include everything from traveling film festivals to intimate CEO dinners to sold-out arena tours.

And as we’ve seen across the industry through our previous coverage, events increasingly seem like the strongest pillar beyond traditional print/display inventory in publisher revenue diversification strategies, which are increasingly imperative.

These 10 examples provide great inspiration and insight into how to succeed.

Regional and local brands

• The Hindu “Made of Chennai” (The Hindu, India) extended a single day (Chennai’s birthday on August 22) into a 40-day citywide experience called Madras Month, coordinated across print, radio, digital, and social, with on-ground activations spanning archival photo exhibitions, art shows, heritage walks, music performances, a 5K/10K run, moonlight cinema screenings, college events, and a two-day food and music festival. The campaign drove 72 million overall reach, 250k+ on-ground engagements and 78k+ registrations. The food and music festival alone attracted 40k+ attendees and generated ₹3.2 million in sales from 41 food stalls, while their Instagram following grew 20% versus 2024. The Hindu’s positioning as Chennai’s authoritative chronicler is the commercial premise underlying the event, making the brand that documents the city the brand that celebrates it.

• Saturday Night Fitness (Media24, South Africa) is an annual sold-out women’s wellness event extending Media24’s portfolio of women’s brands (DRUM, Huisgenoot, SARIE, Fairlady, and TRUELOVE) into a live experience. The 2025 event attracted 1,980 attendees at Montecasino, generated R1.6 million in total revenue with a net profit of R370,000 representing 54% year-on-year profit growth, and grew sponsor participation 75%. Total campaign reach across the five brands was over 3 million, driving ticket revenue, sponsor integration, and brand equity across five titles from a single event property.
• Al Son de Aquí (El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico) is a multi-platform editorial and experiential programme built around a major music residency, positioning El Nuevo Día as the definitive journalistic and cultural hub for the event. The initiative created a digital microsite as the information and cultural center, hosted a Fan Fest that drew more than 1 million attendees, elevated emerging Puerto Rican artists through a curated art programme involving 170 students, produced a tourism magazine (50,000+ copies), and generated US$1.124+ million in sponsorship and activation revenue. An exclusive interview in the EXTRA edition generated over 100,000 pageviews on its own, ranking among the year’s most-consumed content.
• Inquirer Food Fest (The Philadelphia Inquirer, United States) is The Inquirer’s first food festival, designed as a marquee cultural tentpole for Philadelphia with an explicit audience strategy to reach younger, affluent readers who are less likely to subscribe but highly engaged with the Inquirer’s food coverage. The event sold out at 2k attendees, with 35% purchasing premium-tier tickets at US$250 each. Sixty percent of the audience was ages 21-44 with 76% household income +US$100K. Total impressions were +75M, with sponsor awareness at 96%, and 80% word-of-mouth or social sharing post-event, driving return intent at 81%. The Inquirer framed this as a scalable franchise from the start, and seven sponsors joined in the launch year, including Truist Bank, Lincoln Financial, and Uber.

• The Post: The Power of Proximity (Stuff Group, New Zealand) is a four-event series for The Post, a national New Zealand news brand, hosted in Auckland, Wellington, and Queenstown with a fourth event at Te Papa. The brand premise of The Post being where business, power, and politics meet was made literal: Cabinet ministers made exclusive announcements from the stage, and events were chaired by The Post’s editor and national affairs editor, with political and business editors as panelists. About 600 VIP attendees across the series. Beyond the events themselves, the results are striking: Digital subscribers grew 32%, audience grew 37% (unique visitors 2025 vs. 2024), corporate subscription revenue grew 145%, and digital advertising revenue grew 300%. The event series built the brand and demonstrably drove revenue across every channel. 

National and international brands

• BusinessDesk CEO Index Awards: Finding Leadership Among Our Leaders (BusinessDesk, New Zealand) is an inaugural premium awards event for New Zealand’s business community, hosted at the Auckland Park Hyatt with Range Rover as the presenting sponsor. The event ran out of room, with some business leaders unable to secure their place. Reader attention on associated news articles was 3.12x the Web site average, 45% of the event audience were new to BusinessDesk, creating a subscriber conversion opportunity, and BusinessDesk’s Q4 revenue was a record, with +23% year-on-year revenue growth and +13% yield improvement. The entry demonstrates how a premium, invitation-only event for the right audience generates brand love, new audience, and commercial growth simultaneously. The Range Rover partnership has been renewed for future editions.

• Lights. Cities. Action (Dainik Jagran, India) As we covered in Best Revenue Diversification, Dainik Jagran built a six-month traveling film festival across 14 cities and eight states grounded on a deliberate inversion of the destination festival model. Rather than asking audiences in smaller cities to travel, the festival traveled to them. The event drove cultural participation with AI handling the operational layer, driving total reach of 540 million across print, digital, OOH, radio, and television, INR40 million in sponsorship revenue, with sponsors embedded in the experience rather than attached to it as logos. The festival also generated 100+ pages of original editorial content for the newspaper, reinforcing the idea that “the brand that informs India now convenes India.” (Also a finalist in Best Revenue Diversification.)
• NextGen Achievers: Recognising and Inspiring the Next Generation of Leaders (Prothom Alo, Bangladesh) is a nationwide celebration of Bangladesh’s top-performing secondary school students, held simultaneously across all 64 districts on the day SSC results were published. A total of 83,435 students registered and total participation reached 120k. The events included academic guidance sessions, VR gaming, celebrity interactions, concerts, and an online quiz. The microsite generated 5.9 million pageviews; social posts reached 45 million users with 326k engagements, driving commercial results of BDT 5.7 crore in revenue at a 27% profit margin through title sponsorship and 11 co-sponsors. The campaign also generated +20k new subscribers through targeted acquisition at the events. The event was built from the start as a three-way win: community service, commercial revenue, and audience acquisition in a single model.
• WSJ Tech Live in California and Qatar, 2025 (The Wall Street Journal, United States) is a bi-regional expansion of WSJ’s Tech Live franchise, with events in California and Qatar. The California event focused on Silicon Valley C-suite leadership with AI innovation labs and private founder roundtables. The Qatar event used the F1 Grand Prix, cultural excursions, and a CEO Council as programming anchors, positioning WSJ as a cross-regional bridge for global innovation dialogue. Speakers included Sarah Friar (OpenAI), Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Alexis Ohanian, and Alex Rodriguez. The entry focuses on the brand and sponsorship story where WSJ’s events function as primary news sources with exclusive interviews producing global headlines rather than serving as sideline programming, built on a revenue model of premium sponsorships and invitation-only activations that monetise brand credibility directly.
• Zeit Verbrechen Live Tour 2025: From Headphones to Arenas — Scaling Intimacy for 25,000 Fans (Die Zeit, Germany) is a four-date arena tour for Zeit Verbrechen, Die Zeit’s true crime podcast, with venues including the Uber Arena in Berlin and Barclays Arena in Hamburg with 25k total attendees. The central creative challenge was maintaining the “campfire intimacy” of a podcast in a 10,000-seat arena, achieved through a 180-square metre stage, 19-screen LED installation, live music integration, and format innovations that provided emotional breathing room between investigative segments. Attendees described the experience as “a campfire with 5,000 people.” The tour was designed to reach younger and female audiences who discover Die Zeit through audio rather than print and to launch a ZEIT Podcast subscription alongside merchandise as a new revenue stream without host-read advertising. The Instagram content from the tour reached approximately 1 million accounts, with posts ranking among the channel’s top-performing content.

Implications from the Best Use of an Event finalists

Events are some of the most defensible premium advertising inventory publishers own: No platform can replicate proximity to a publisher’s editorial authority in a live setting, and several entries here make this explicit in their commercial design. 

WSJ Tech Live’s sponsorship model is built on brands gaining proximity to headline-generating editorial programming. BusinessDesk’s Range Rover partnership was structured around editorial curation. And The Post’s cabinet ministers used its stages for exclusive policy announcements specifically because the events were editorially independent. 

In each case, the sponsor’s value came from association with the publisher’s credibility in the room — something that can only be sold by the publisher, not replicated by programmatic MFA sites or LLMs.

Audience specificity drives sponsor premium, not scale: The Inquirer Food Fest’s audience profile (60% ages 21-44, 76% household income US$100K+) was the commercial argument for seven sponsors in the launch year. 

The Zeit Verbrechen tour targeted younger and female audiences specifically because they represent a demographic that had not previously been reachable through Die Zeit’s print product. BusinessDesk’s CEO Index Awards was oversubscribed and delivered a record commercial quarter precisely because of who was in the room.

WSJ Tech Live brought C-suite attendees to California and Qatar at or above attendance goals with AI innovation labs and private founder roundtables generating bespoke sponsorship value.

In each case, the event’s commercial value was defined by audience composition, not scale.

The yearly franchise model builds the asset and the margin: Media24’s Saturday Night Fitness grew sponsor participation from eight to 14 partners and delivered 54% year-on-year profit growth in its 2025 edition.

The Hindu’s Made of Chennai grew 20% over 2024 and 50% over 2023 across a consistent format. Range Rover has already committed to the BusinessDesk CEO Index Awards for a second year.

The Inquirer Food Fest’s 81% attendee return intent and 96% sponsor awareness are the metrics that determine whether a first-year event becomes a 10-year franchise. 

Prothom Alo’s NextGen event attracted 13 sponsors, a commercial outcome that reflects what a well-defined audience and a repeatable format can attract over time.

Events generate cross-channel commercial returns: The Post’s event series correlated with 300% digital advertising revenue growth across the year as the brand earned national reach and editorial authority that carried into every other commercial conversation.

BusinessDesk’s record Q4 was, in their own framing, turbocharged by the brand awareness and brand love the CEO Index Awards generated.

El Nuevo Día’s Al Son de Aquí produced US$1.124 million in sponsorship and activation revenue and an exclusive interview that ranked among the year’s most-consumed content.

Dainik Jagran’s JFF generated INR40 million in sponsorship revenue and 100+ pages of original editorial content for the newspaper simultaneously. The event is not just a standalone revenue line item, it’s a flywheel.

AI is changing the economics of scaling events: Dainik Jagran’s 14-city JFF was operationally viable because AI managed 3,500+ city-specific creative assets, 600,000+ WhatsApp audience messages with 8,000 personalised conversations, and zero-error registrations across the full footprint, freeing teams to focus on experience and programming instead of logistics.

Prothom Alo ran simultaneous events across all 64 districts of Bangladesh on a single day. 

In both cases, the operational cost barrier that would previously have made a property at this scale uneconomic was substantially reduced. For publishers evaluating multi-city or multi-market event strategies, this is a meaningful shift in what is actually financially viable. 

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