2025 Startups 100 | Marketing award winner and shortlist

Gone are the ‘Mad Men’ days of marketing a business. When the consumer mindset changes daily, brands need more than a billboard to capture their attention — as our Startups 100 Marketing Award winner, and our three nominees, illustrate. 

Also featured in our 2025 Startups 100, these four fast-growth startups are writing the future of marketing. Moving away from traditional advertising, they have each adopted a unique strategy to build an audience of millions, both online and offline, in less than five years. 

Want to know what life looks like after Google? Read on to discover which company we picked as our winner, and discover what business marketing looks like in 2025.

WINNER – Runna

Runna’s conquering of the fitness sector is notable when you consider how competitive the space is. When you’re going up against brands such as Nike, the race to market domination looks won. But what Runna lacked in size, it has made up for in marketing tactics.

The brand has leveraged influencers to earn the trust of the UK running community. Its personalised workouts have been designed by big names such as ultra-athlete Joshua Patterson, Olympic marathoner Stephanie Davis, and World Triathlete Champion, Alex Yee.

Runna has even managed to run on water. It went across the pond in 2024 to provide exclusive plans for those training for the New York Marathon. And, by complementing more elite partnerships with beloved consumer brands like Lululemon, Runna has been able to target a broad audience of differing fitness levels, to build a loyal following of over 300k. 

Other canny brand partnerships have followed. Last June, it coupled up with Tinder to launch SoleMates Run Clubs, adding further value for customers and helping to grow its userbase through organic, word of mouth referrals. 

We can barely keep up with Runna’s running mates. Just over a week ago, it also became the official digital fitness partner of (what else?) parkrun UK, a free, 5k running, jogging, or walking event for communities across the UK.

Runna now counts hundreds of thousands of users in 180 countries. It’s in the top ten for our overall Startups 100 Index, and the app’s compelling blend of influencer partnerships and community building makes it a deserved first-place finisher for our 2025 Marketing Award.

SHORTLISTED – SURREAL Cereal

Finding your tone of voice is an important part of any marketing plan. If anyone is looking for inspiration, look to SURREAL. On the box, it’s high-protein versions of your favourite childhood cereal brands. But its cheeky brand personality has made it so much more.

Since winning the Just Started award two years ago, SURREAL has bowled over audiences on social media. Its provocative marketers have poked fun at their “boring” finance team and won us over with their transparent attempts to sell, sell, sell (“ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO SELL CEREAL” reads one of its latest LinkedIn posts).

We’re particular fans of its recent collaboration with GymShark, a natural partner for SURREAL’s fitness-foodie target audience. SURREAL teamed up with the brand to make Cardi-Os high protein cereal which customers had to squat to pick up. Just kidding.

Through these disruptive stunts SURREAL has managed to stand out on one of the stalest shelves in supermarkets. It’s earned over 200k social followers and brought excitement back to British breakfasts (now please don’t make fun of us, SURREAL’s marketing team).

SHORTLISTED – Tonic Health

Consumer education is one of the biggest challenges for health brands. You can’t fix a problem that your audiences don’t know about. That’s why Tonic Health founder Sunna van Kampen decided to build a trusted platform first, and a vitamin brand second.

You may recognise van Kampen from social media platforms, where he has over one million followers currently, and averages 45 million views per month. He began by visiting local supermarkets and highlighting the high levels of sugar and ultra-processed foods (UPFs) in some of the biggest household brands in your fridge, from yoghurt drinks to ketchup sauce. 

These journalistic-style clips quickly went viral across Instagram and TikTok and have now racked up millions of views. That, in turn, has provided the perfect platform to promote Tonic Health’s natural vitamin drinks and gummies.

In an era of misinformation, van Kampen is a refreshing proposition for customers. Having positioned himself as the Martyn Lewis of health supplements, Tonic Health is a deserved nominee for our Marketing Award, and an example of personal branding at its best. 

SHORTLISTED – Financielle

Financielle is another brand that has made consumer education its mission statement. Specifically, addressing the financial literacy gap for women who, thanks to the motherhood penalty, often have less in savings and pensions when they reach retirement.

Recognising how intimidatingly complex money management can be, Financielle has made use of a relatively new medium to translate its content into an easy-to-absorb format: podcasts. Every week, the founders sit down for a sofa-style chat about how to better manage your savings for the Financielle podcast, called ‘The Vault’. 

Each episode is filmed and turned into bitesize videos for TikTok. Viewers are invited to write in with their own financial conundrums, turning confusing scenarios about inheritance tax and car financing into friendly anecdotes that can be more easily explained.

Financielle’s trusted brand identity has clearly chimed with its audience. It was voted App of the Day by Apple twice and has grown a following of 200k. By using human-led, user-generated content to sell financial services, the app provides the ideal case study for how today’s brands can reach new audiences through organic, multi-channel means.

Click below to discover the nominees and winners for our other Startups 100 awards:

🌎 Startups 100 Sustainability Award 2025
♿ Startups 100 DEI Award 2025
💝 Startups 100 Social Impact Award 2025