Barley Communications and National Trading Standards (NTS) have been shortlisted at The Stationers’ Company Innovation Excellence Awards 2026 for our national campaign tackling the emerging threat of AI-enabled scams.
Fighting AI cloning scams for National Trading Standards is shortlisted in the Communications including Marketing category, recognising an innovative campaign that made a complex and largely invisible fraud risk tangible and understandable for consumers.
Working as NTS’s outsourced press office, Barley combined frontline enforcement intelligence, original consumer research and authentic evidence from a real voice cloning scam with a broadcast-first media strategy.
The campaign generated 474 media placements, including coverage on BBC Breakfast and ITV and across national and regional radio, print and online media. Importantly, it also helped turn awareness into action, with 3,500 scam checks carried out through scam-checking tool Ask Silver during the campaign period.
Read the full case study: Delivering a national behaviour change campaign on AI-enabled scams
The shortlisting follows Barley’s success at the Innovation Excellence Awards in 2025, when our work with Leadenhall Market and the City of London Corporation won the Communications and Marketing Award.
That campaign brought weekend market trading back to the historic Leadenhall Market after a 40-year hiatus, helping to revitalise the landmark as a weekend destination. It delivered a 109% year-on-year increase in weekend visitors and a 150% increase in tenant turnover.
Read the case study: Revitalising Leadenhall Market as a weekend destination
The 2026 Innovation Excellence Awards take place at Stationers’ Hall on Friday 23 October.