Merida, the lead character of Brave 

With two female comedians, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, co-hosting the 2013 Golden Globes, it seemed only appropriate that Pixar's first film about a young woman, Brave, should win the gong for best animated feature film. Brave is the seventh animation to win this category since its creation, and the sixth put out by Pixar. Winning a Golden Globe will no doubt delight its creators, but what wider impact has winning major awards had on animation in general?

It's only relatively recently that animated films have been recognised by the major awards ceremonies. The Academy was the first to launch an animated feature film category in 2002. The Golden Globes followed suit in 2006. Even the Annie Awards, which were set up in the US in 1972 to celebrate career contributions to animation, only created a best animated feature category 20 years later.

It was hoped at their inception that these specialist awards for animation would bring increased attention to the genre. It was certainly necessary: before the specialist category was created, just one animation, Beauty and the Beast, in 1991, had even been nominated for best picture. Toy Story 3 (2010) and Up (2009) have since been shortlisted. On the other hand, some critics have argued that a dedicated award for animation actually reduces the already-small chances of an animation being named best picture.

However, although animated films have been treated differently to feature films at awards ceremonies, they indisputably rival them at the box office. Of the 50 highest-growing films of the noughties, 11 were animated films. Shrek 2, distributed by DreamWorks Animation, was the highest-growing film of 2002, taking just under $920 million, and Disney Pixar's Toy Story 3 was the highest-grossing film of 2010. Wallace and Gromit's Curse of the Were-Rabbit, produced by Aardman and Dreamworks, went to No1 at the box office worldwide on its release in October 2005. It then won an Oscar the following March.

Brave was the eighth highest-grossing film of 2012. But while Brave stood out because of its innovative mother-daughter storyline and sumptuous Scottish setting, 2012 has seen a slew of high-quality animated films. These include Sony Pictures' hammy horror Hotel Transylvania, voiced by Adam Sandler and Selena Gomez, and Rise of the Guardians, a 3D fantasy adventure featuring Hugh Jackman, which was also well-received. Frankenweenie, Tim Burton's stop-motion animation, was released as the director was made a fellow of the BFI.

But with nominated films already triumphing at the box office, does a gong greatly increase audience awareness and sales?

There is evidence of DVD sales spiking around the Oscar awards ceremony for winning films. Toy Story 3 saw an increase in sales of 449.2% the week before it won in 2010, and Spirited Away's sales increased a whopping 35,132% a week after its win in 2003. But these are largely exceptions to the rule: Ratatouille, which won the Oscar for best animated film in 2008, did not see an associated uplift in sales. In fact, its sales dropped 84% during awards season.

However, an awards win does help to build an animated film's standing within the industry. Messinger says that "it certainly helps put you on the map. It's an internationally recognised accolade and the global press coverage which follows helps raise the profile of what is essentially a niche art form."

"While people would have heard of the Disney Pixar studio, Brave winning a Golden Globe will put it and animated film in the public consciousness."

However, if cinema-goers are impressed by awards, studio-owners are even more enamoured of them. According to Messinger, it's within the industry that the effects of a win are really felt, "When Howl won an Oscar, it put Studio Ghibli on the map and cemented relationships with the Disney studio who distributed it." Rango, 2012's Oscar winner starring Johnny Depp, led to Paramount Pictures announcing a new animation branch. Paramount Animation will be releasing its first animated film, The Spongebob SquarePants Movie 2, in 2014.

Peculiarly, Brave's Scottish setting has caused the film to have a significant impact on the country's tourist trade, which may also indirectly benefit from its win at the Globes. While the film was produced in Pixar's Californian studios by an American team, the film is set in Scotland and has a strong British voice cast, including Julie Walters, Emma Thompson, Billy Connolly and Robbie Coltrane.

Mike Cantlay, Chairman of Scotland's tourism organisation VisitScotland, told The Telegraph that he thought the film would bring in an additional ￡140 million to the Scottish economy. Footage from Brave was incuded in an August 2012 ad campaign for VisitScotland and the organisation launched a dedicated Brave website at the time of the film's release, complete with nearly 1,000 "Brave travel experience" holiday packages.

The glory of winning a gong undeniably adds lustre to the animated films involved - even for Pixar, which has plenty of awards lining its shelves. However, it is no longer true that animated films need a leg-up at the box office: the biggest and best, like Brave, are already enormously popular with film fans. Indeed, the biggest beneficiary since the introduction of dedicated awards has been the animated film industry itself. Specialist categories for animation have meant that at least half a dozen animations a year are discussed in the same breath - and with the same seriousness - as the nominees for the other major awards.