No one has to tell you how crowded your industry is. In the U.S. alone, there are over 100,000 companies listed in local phone books that would love to help with advertising, marketing, graphic arts, public relations, web and digital.

That number swells exponentially when you add all the individuals who work for those firms, plus freelancers and the tens of thousands who work for companies that employ their own creative staffs.

In a growing swarm of creative firms and individuals, it is increasingly difficult to stand out from the crowd. Over the past 22 years, thousands of the world’s top creative firms and communication departments have turned to the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP) in search of third-party, earned recognition that would separate them from their peers.

AMCP’s MarCom Awards, is one of the industry’s oldest, largest and most prestigious creative competitions. It is designed the way communication professionals want a creative competition to be run. Online entry is quick and easy, entries can be uploaded in seconds; fees are reasonable, so multiple entries can be submitted for various clients; work is judged on its own merits, not on time-consuming, imaginative explanations; results are unbiased and reported quickly, not months later when everyone has moved on to other projects and other clients.

As part of its mission, AMCP fosters and supports the efforts of creative professionals who contribute their unique talents to public service and charitable organizations.

MarCom entrants can enter their pro bono work without charge. Over the past decade, AMCP has donated about $200,000 to charitable and needy causes.