Anna Wintour to accept Brand Visionary honor at the gala on Oct. 18 in New York

Classroom Crowdfunding nonprofit DonorsChoose.org to receive Brand Save honor 

Adweek, the leading resource for marketers, today announced the recipients of its 2017 Brand Genius awards, the masterminds of marketing, and Brand Visionary and Brand Save honorees. The 28th annual Adweek Brand Genius awards celebrate the best and brightest minds in marketing. The 2017 award show will take place on Wednesday, Oct. 18 at Cipriani 25 Broadway in New York City.

“Adweek’s 2017 Brand Genius class raised the bar on innovation and creativity,” said Adweek Editorial Director James Cooper. “The honorees all brought their [A]-Game and broke through an ultra-competitive marketplace with the highest-quality work.”

Adweek’s Brand Genius awards honor the chief marketers behind the most inventive, ambitious and successful brand-building efforts across 10 categories. Each honoree will be profiled in Adweek’s dedicated Brand Genius Issue (Oct. 16) and on Adweek.com. At the awards ceremony, sponsored by Presenting Partner NBCUniversal, Adweek will also name the Grand Brand Genius from the 2017 class, whose exemplary achievements rise above all others. The Brand Genius class of 2017, as chosen by Adweek’s jury of industry experts and senior editors, are:

Automotive: Subaru of America, Alan Bethke, VP, Marketing

Social Media: Instagram, Taj Alavi, Head of Brand Marketing 

Technology: IBM, Jon Iwata, SVP, Chief Brand Officer

Luxury: Coach, Victor Luis, CEO

Home: Casper, Luke Sherwin, Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer 

Apparel: Adidas, Alegra O’Hare, VP of Global Brand Communications 

Appliances: Whirlpool, Bill Beck, General Manager - Kitchen

Industrial: General Electric, Linda Boff, CMO

Consumer Packaged Goods: Frito-Lay North America, Jennifer Saenz, SVP, CMO 

Hospitality: Marriott International, Karin Timpone, Global Marketing Officer

2017 Brand Visionary: Anna Wintour, Editor in Chief, Vogue

Dame Anna Wintour, the Editor-in-Chief of Vogue and Artistic Director of Condé Nast, has been named Brand Visionary for 2017 and will accept her honor at the gala. Brand Visionary acknowledges and celebrates a career’s worth of achievement in creating a world-renowned brand. As the unrivaled arbiter of global fashion, Wintour has made a singular imprint on the business style and design since joining Vogue as its top editor in July 1988. In 2013, Wintour also was named artistic director of Vogue’s publisher Condé Nast, where she has played an integral role in reshaping the media company’s portfolio of platforms, which include publications such as Glamour, GQ, Teen Vogue, and Vanity Fair, as well as entertainment division Condé Nast Entertainment. Wintour, who will be profiled in Adweek’s Oct. 16 issue, joins an elite group of Visionaries that includes 2016 honoree Arnold Schwarzenegger, along with Arianna Huffington, Bono, Russell Simmons and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

2017 Brand Save: DonorsChoose.org

Brand Save commemorates a breakthrough online charity that brings excellence, innovation and ingenuity to cause marketing and the world of charities. This year’s honoree, DonorsChoose.org, is a bicoastal nonprofit organization that since 2000 has fulfilled over 600,000 classroom project requests, with more than $560 million in donations to purchase everything from butterfly cocoons and robotics kits to art supplies. The nonprofit joins past honorees Pencils of Promise, Every Mother Counts and (RED). Accepting the award is its founder, and a former teacher, Charles Best.