NEW YORK—Ketchum and Weber Shandwick have earned the most North American SABRE nominations for their clients this year, Ketchum with 17 and Weber Shandwick with 14 campaigns among the finalists.

This year’s North American SABRE Awards competition once again generated more than 2,000 entries, with the finalists selected by a jury of almost 50 industry leaders. The winners will be announced at our second virtual SABRE Awards ceremony, which will take place on May 11—tickets will go on sale next week.

While perennial honorees Ketchum and Weber Shandwick led the way, a mix of global and midsized agencies also achieved impressive success in this year’s competition: clients of Edelman and M Booth received nine nominations apiece; Allison+Partners, Finn Partners and FleishmanHillard notched eight finalists.

Other firms with multiple nominations include: Kivvit, and Zeno Group (7 each); Current Global, Hill+Knowlton Strategies, and MSL (six each); Burson Cohn & Wolfe, C+C, GCI Health, Golin, and Real Chemistry (five each) and Canadian firm Argyle, Bospar, Citizen Relations, MWWPR, and Plus Communications (four finalists apiece).

“We saw some outstanding work from across North America in 2020,” said Paul Holmes, who chaired the SABRE jury. “The Covid pandemic obviously impacted the public relations business, but it did nothing to diminish either the generation of big, bold ideas of the creative execution of campaigns. This quality of work was surely a factor in the resilience of the business, and its strong performance at the end of last year and beginning of this.”

A complete list of North American SABRE finalists can be found here.