Southern States Business Awards

About the Southern States Business Awards

About this award
Aims, selection process & procedure
Award winners

New World Report is proud to announce the launch of the Southern States Business Awards 2023! This year we will be merging our popular state Business Awards covering Texas, North Carolina, and Virginia to create a single comprehensive programme that encompasses all off the Southern US territories.

This diverse and bustling region is a central hub for many of the United States’ most prosperous and high-growth industries, making the South a key driving force of the overall economy. Five of 2021’s top fifteen states ranked by GDP were Southern, with Texas representing not only the second largest GDP in the US, but also ranking in the top ten economies worldwide. Like the rest of the country, each of the Southern states has its own unique cultural, geographical, and historical identity that directly influences its business landscape and the industries that it is most closely associated with.

One of the nation’s top tourist destinations, Florida attracted over 200 million visitors in 2021 alone, thanks in large part to Orlando’s world-famous Disney World resort, which is recognised as the largest single-site employer in the US. Florida is also a popular region for the Aerospace sector, being home to multiple prominent corporations including Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Over 400 Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in Georgia – including giants such as Coca-Cola and UPS – due to the state being renowned as a great place to do business. Georgia is now also emerging as a hotspot for the Life Sciences industry, with hundreds of Health startups being founded there in recent years.

North Carolina is a key player in the Biotechnology sector, ranking as the leading biomanufacturing state in America by employment numbers. Virginia, on the other hand, boasts the nation’s third-largest Technology workforce, and rivals even the famed Silicon Valley in concentration of tech talent. On an international level, Virginia’s Data Centre industry is the largest in the world, with a fifth of the total market share. The most significant GDP increase across the US in 2021 occurred in the deep-south state Tennessee, which saw its economy grow by more than 10% thanks to a boom in its Healthcare, Logistics, and Finance sectors.

The Southern States Business Awards 2023 will celebrate the diversity, resilience, and industriousness of this unique region. New World Report are excited to recognise the trailblazers advancing the South’s top industries, which include Technology, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Real Estate, Tourism, and many more. The team are dedicated to rewarding companies based only on merit-based factors such as innovation, business performance and expansion, client service, and community outreach. If you would like to put forward yourself or a deserving business you know for consideration in the Southern States Business Awards, simply complete the submission form provided!

To ensure that the process is as straightforward as possible, we will be in touch to notify you of the outcome of your nomination. To those who are successful, we provide a selection of both free and commercial advertising packages designed to maximise the promotional benefits of the award. Taking part in the Southern States Business Awards is a great opportunity to advertise your company to an international audience of professionals, so don’t hesitate and submit your nomination today!

1. Researching of all nominees

The team here at New World Report work intensely to identify true market leaders, innovators and enterprising start-ups and existing businesses, driving many of the nominations ourselves.

We encourage external nominations via the nomination or voting form which is held on our website. We invite our subscribers, website users, social media followers and our wider circulation to submit nominations via the online form.

Nominating parties are open to put forward either third-party businesses whom they hold in high regard, or their own organisation or sub-division of their business if they see fit.

2. Creating our shortlist

All nominees will be contacted directly and are formally requested to accept their nomination before we proceed further. Should any firm or individual rather decline at this point, they are of course welcome to do so and will be taken out of the running.

Those who formally accept are given the opportunity to submit additional materials in support of their nomination. Such additional items could be evidence of client feedback, client case studies, detail of any major projects etc. Although there is no obligation to supply such details, we have found that many nominees value this stage, in the process, as much as our research team do.

3. Judging and evaluating our nominees

Our dedicated research team will assess all information presented to them.

The team gather information independently from a variety of publicly accessible sources, which are assessed alongside any material supplied by a nominating party or the nominee themselves.

The research team casts their final judgement, based on various criteria including but not limited to client dedication, innovation, business growth, longevity, online reputation, customer feedback and business performance.

4. The lucky winners

Once winners are determined, they will be personally notified by our team before any public announcement is made, allowing time for any communications throughout the wider business and the coordination of marketing strategies. In most cases winners will be notified initially by email so don’t forget to keep a close eye on those inboxes!

Unfortunately, not everyone can be a winner; however, whether you have been selected as a winner or not all nominees are encouraged to come back next year.

Once the press embargo is lifted, details of New World Report award winners will be made public via the website, award winners’ magazine and newsletter.

5. Maximise your business award success

We are able to offer a range of promotional packages and promotional items to New World Report award winners, these vary from inclusion in the free-of-charge winners’ directory, to trophies, content in winners’ special edition magazine and on our website.

We encourage all winners to publicly announce their win independently. Announcements via company websites, social media, via publicly released press releases, and through local and national press are all great ways of maximising the exposure which can be gained from such an amazing achievement. If you have need of further advice on how to gain maximum exposure from your win, please feel free to get in touch. We are more than happy to assist our clients with their needs.

It is the first year this award has run. Winners will be displayed here after the official announcement, so come back and see them soon!

Team Photo Meet The Team
Need Help With Your Nomination? We can point you in the right direction.

The Nomination Team can assist with answering any queries that you have regarding a nomination, or the process involved in taking part in one of our award programmes.

Please get in touch with us via email or over the phone if you have any questions - we are happy to help!

Key Dates

Entries Open:

Wednesday 11th January 2023

Entries Closed:

Monday 6th March 2023

Winners Announced:

June 2023

FAQs

When was New World Report first launched?+
New World Report launched early 2020 and was born out of the merge of two of AI Global Media Group’s existing brands U.S. Business News and Latin America News. New World Report is a news platform updated each day with news and insights for business professionals spanning the Americas. A newsletter is circulated once a week to 100,000 (approx..) recipients within the South and North American business community. New World Report seeks to inform, entertain, influence and endorse businesses of all sizes and from all industries across this dynamic region. New World Report remains under the ownership of AI Global Media, a B2B international media group established in 2010.
Where did the nomination come from?+
In the interest of nurturing an environment proven to produce a high response rate, we don’t ask nominees to reveal any personal identity. With regards to methodology, we often nominate candidates ourselves and, when it comes to voting, if you didn’t cast a vote through a self-submission, it is likely to have been cast via a colleague or client who has received one of our direct invitations. One of the main mantras of our awards system is that your ability to succeed is not linked to the number of votes received, meaning your award is presented purely on merit. In the interest of security and fairness, we are able to track unusual behaviour on our website to identify repeat votes and cyber-threats.
What happens if I agree to be shortlisted?+
In the interest of focusing our efforts on relevant and eager candidates, we ask all nominees to accept their position on the shortlist. Nominees who accept are subject to our scrutiny during the internal vetting procedure and are given the opportunity to present their own data to be considered alongside information collated by our research team. This can take up to 8 weeks for final assessments to be rendered.
Who makes the final decision?+
We employ an entirely impartial panel of 5 individuals to conduct all research. At the helm of the panel, is a veteran academic leader with international academic and training experience and is well versed in research, fact-checking and mediation. New World Reports research is overseen by Jeremy Roe, who has been a leading figure in research for the last 5 years. This two-tiered system allows for a neutral mediator which we feel allows a more efficient method when determining individuals and companies most deserving of winning an award and has brought us much success and commendation throughout its use.
Is there a winner’s ceremony?+
The short answer is, no. We decided to not focus our efforts on a celebratory event. Despite being an enjoyable occasion, it doesn’t support our group’s philosophy of cost-effective marketing. We follow the belief that optional costs associated with an award are better placed in a year’s worth of online marketing for the winner rather than spending large sums on a ceremonial evening. Our press announcements are made digitally, online and across our network to enforce our position as digital publishers. We aim to provide you with the tools (both digital and physical) to generate real-world value.
What happens if I am deemed successful?+
After you have been notified of you win, we enforce a short press embargo while the programme manager will liaise with you to establish your preferred method of coverage. Generally, our coverage takes the form of a digital winners’ special edition magazine, we also offer physical trophies, wall mounted certificates and plaques and digital certificates, web-based advertisements and personalised press releases.
Are there any costs involved?+
As mentioned previously, there are no compulsory costs in accepting a nomination or winning an award. We do offer a variety of paid additional benefits for our winners, but these are completely optional. To demonstrate our commitment to no mandatory fees, all our winners are offered a free of charge promotional package. Our company policy will always remain that regardless of budget, our clients should always be able to garner the full value of the award and our seal of approval. We offer a variety of promotional opportunities to our winners, as we have an extensive network and we know, more than anyone, the wider business benefits from promoting industry awards.