British television viewers may recognize her as the one-time “Muse of Marketing” on Sky News or for her appearances on BBC’s version of The Apprentice. But countless business executives know her in a more personal light – as a trusted advisor who helps refine their marketing strategy and guide their expansion into new markets.

For the past three decades, the art of bridging cultural barriers has been Allyson Stewart-Allen’s passion. As the founder and CEO of International Marketing Partners, she’s helped more than 200 businesses leverage new opportunities in the United States and internationally.

As an American-born California native who has called the United Kingdom her home for nearly 30 years, Stewart-Allen brings first-hand experience to the international business challenges her clients face. “My goal is that, by helping people bridge cultural or organizational divides, they and their organizations are happier and more able to fulfill their purpose,” she says.

In addition to her work as a consultant, Stewart-Allen has also been active as a public speaker and as mentor for the Mayor of London’s International Business Programme. In addition, she co-wrote Working With Americans, a book designed to educate foreigners on America’s business culture.

This year, she’ll don another title – Judging Committee Chair of the Marketing Awards categories in The 2017 International Business Awards. It’s a role where she can draw on her expertise to not only select winning companies, but provide input that other entrants can draw on as the move forward.

“The Stevie Awards are one of the few business competitions that are truly international, providing judges with a great opportunity to compare the achievements of businesses from a global, rather than local, perspective” she says.

An emphasis on ‘localization’

“I have always been fascinated by how businesses operate, particularly in the areas of leadership, sales and marketing,” saysStewart-Allen.

After attending the University of Southern California’s  Marshall School of Business as an undergrad in the early 1980s, she earned her MBA under the tutelage of Peter Drucker, one of the most influential business thinkers of the past half century.

She went on to work for multiple blue-chip advisory firms – PwC, PA Consulting Group and Hay Management Consultants – before establishing International Marketing Partners in 1991. There, she’s surrounded herself with a group of marketing and business development specialists who bring experience in a variety of industries.

Stewart-Allen and her team have counseled dozens of businesses, including the likes of Burberry, HSBC, NBC Universal and SAB Miller. Her firm provides market analysis as well as insights into foreign business cultures that companies can leverage to attain better returns on their marketing investment.

“I am a hands-on CEO, so I define what my clients require and work with the Board and their operational teams to meet the agreed objectives, which could mean running a workshop one day, talking to a CEO about the strategy for international growth, running leadership courses or undertaking market research,” she explains.

An improved understanding of overseas markets helps ensure that clients avoid a one-size-fits-all strategy that may not work in every corner of the globe. “As a result of more local approaches and effectiveness, my clients achieve increased brand loyalty, employee loyalty and stakeholder engagement,” Stewart-Allen notes.

In the age of social media, she says, the stakes are even higher when organizations step outside their comfort zone. “It can bring a company’s mistakes to the consumer’s attention within minutes and thereby detrimentally affect the company’s brand, reputation and ability to bounce back.”

Leading the panel of judges for the marketing awards is another avenue for Stewart-Allen to help companies get it right. “My goal is to help businesses operate profitably in an increasingly global environment, at a time when the future is hard to predict,” she says.

Online marketing moves at the speed of light. Customers, prospects and partners can be the lifeblood of a business, which is a sentiment that TopSpot Internet Marketing has set their sights on to differentiate themselves from other search marketing firms. As they become one of the fastest growing firms in Houston, Texas, their focus on accountability, transparency, collaboration, education and delivering meaningful results helped them win the Interactive Agency of the Year Award in The 2016 American Business Awards.

Winners in The 2017 American Business Awards were recently announced. Interested in submitting nominations for 2018? Request your entry kit here.

15 Wins and Counting

TopSpot first submitted Stevie Awards nominations in 2015, winning 15 Stevie Awards including last year’s Grand Stevie Award for the 2016 Interactive Agency of the Year. The Grand Stevie Award is the highest honor.

“Winning multiple awards for our work on websites we’ve designed and developed and then going on to win the Grand Stevie Award for Interactive Agency of the Year further solidified the fact that our efforts are meeting and exceeding industry standards in addition to driving leads for our clients.”

At TopSpot, their focal point is delivering meaningful results for their clients.

“Our culture is built around a quality-focused approach, both in our work & our customer service. Our team takes tremendous pride in having a positive impact on our clients' businesses.”

Big Changes for 2017 and Beyond

TopSpot expects to see many changes in their industry. As mobile search continues to increase and with Google’s announcement of the mobile first index, more websites built and optimized for mobile devices will take precedence.

“We are also seeing a rise in voice search because of devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home. This is something we must take into consideration more and more when optimizing websites, making sure they are optimized for conversational searches.”

They also anticipate a greater importance on user experience with, “continued site speed monitoring, getting page load times down on all sites, which contributes to both user experience and organic rankings.”

It’s Not Just Digital Marketing

Director of SEO, John Varghese highlights a story about a client’s thankfulness that shouldn’t be overlooked, even when everything runs smoothly.

“He spoke to the entire company with a lot of thankfulness and communicated to us that we do more than just build websites, develop paid search campaigns or SEO, and that we helped him, his family, his employees and his employees families build their dreams. He went on to say that he was able to spend more time with his family and the charitable work he is involved in, employ more people, give raises, that his employees were able to send their kids to college, sometimes for the first time in their family history.” He said that, “Since that time we have an internal standard of asking if we are building dreams for our clients.”

The Stevie® Awards today announced Grand Stevie Award winners in The 14^th Annual American Business Awards competition. Winners will be presented with their Grand Stevie trophies at the ABAs’ gala banquet on June 20 in New York.

CallidusCloud, the Dublin, CA based software developer, received the Grand Stevie for organization of the year, for earning the most award points (76) in The 2016 American Business Awards. Other top ABA Grand Stevie winners include TopSpot Internet Marketing (Houston, TX) for interactive agency of the year (17 points), Merkle (Columbia, MD) for marketing agency of the year (16), and MWW (East Rutherford, NJ) for public relations agency of the year (17.5). This is the fourth year in a row that MWW has won this award.

The Grand Stevie Awards were granted to the organizations that submitted the best body of entries to The American Business Awards this year, in their own name or in the names of one or more clients, with a Gold Stevie Award win counting for three points, a Silver Stevie win for two points, and a Bronze Stevie win counting for 1.5 points. The organizations with the most points won.

Besides CallidusCloud, TopSpot Internet Marketing, Merkle, and MWW, Grand Stevies were also awarded to the 10 other organizations with the most points in the 2016 competition. There were a few ties this year.  The other winners are:

1. Cisco Systems, San Jose, CA (52 points)
2. Tied at 27 points: Jeunesse Global (Orlando, FL) and Lakeshore Recycling Systems (Morton Grove, IL)
3. Accenture, Chicago, IL (22)
4. Isagenix International, Gilbert, AZ (20)
5. Tied at 18.5 points: Cigna (Bloomfield, CT) and John Hancock (Boston, MA)
6.  Tied at 17.5 points: AT&T (Dallas, TX) and New American Funding (Tustin, CA)
7. SoftPro, Raleigh, NC (17)

The American Business Awards honor an all-inclusive spectrum of American business people and organizations -- from non-profits, emerging start-ups, major public companies and government agencies, to corner-office executives, product developers, marketers and web development teams. More than 3,400 entries were submitted to The 2016 American Business Awards and more than 250 executives nationwide participated in judging.

Stevie Awards are conferred in five levels of distinction: Grand, Gold, Silver, Bronze, and People’s Choice. More than 400 executives and their guests are expected to attend the June 20 awards gala at New York’s Marriott Marquis Hotel.

For a complete list of all 2016 American Business Awards’ Stevie Award winners visit http://www.StevieAwards.com/ABA.

This is the first year in which Stevie winners in The American Business Awards are announced before the awards gala. In the ABAs’ first 13 years, finalists were announced in advance of the awards gala, but the Stevie winners weren’t revealed until the night of the presentations.