By Ankur Singh
In a market where results are all that matter, exchange4media is launching the Indian Marketing Awards 2014 with an intent to reward innovation, strategic thinking, results and key outcomes that contribute value to the respective organizations. With this target in mind, the awards have an exhaustive selection process that make up the shortlisting checklist.
The awards recognize the fact that marketing is critical for organic growth of a business and its central role in creating, communicating, capturing and sustaining value for an organization.
“The award categories reflect strategic marketing objectives that are common to all organizations. The submissions will be judged against the marketing achievements of all types of business rather than just those of direct competitors in your industry sector. We have made sure that entrants provide independent and robust data that supports the claims made. The judges will give more weight to quantitative data and comparable trend data over time. Key measures on the basis of which the entrants will be judged are sales, profit, market share and customer attitudes,” says Annurag Batra, Chairman and Editor-In-Chief, exchange4media Group.
Weightage in judging
All entries will be evaluated equally on the basis of four elementary criteria—issue, solution (including marketing outputs), result (marketing outcomes), and key outcomes that contributed value to the organization.
The first criterion, the issue (challenge and objective), explores the marketing challenge the brand was trying to overcome. The target could be the solution of a business problem, or taking advantage of a business opportunity. This criterion holds 10% weightage in the selection process.
The second criterion, the solution (including strategy and execution) requires the brands to share all the information about marketing output, including the marketing strategy applied, and the execution plan. Brands need to share information on what they did to solve the challenges, what media they used and why, what were the strategies behind their creative messaging. This criterion carries 30% weight in the overall judging process.
The third criterion, the result, is all about the measurable impact on the brand/product. Brands need to support any claims they make in terms of results matching targets or exceeding objectives. This criterion carries 30% weight in the overall judging process.
The final criterion, key outcomes (that contributed value to the organization/measurable impact on overall business), will help in judging how the campaign helped the umbrella brand to grow, and will explore the measurable impact on the corporate as a whole. Key outcomes will include enhanced marketing communications planning and execution, improved ROI insights and tools, and streamlined execution that result in cost savings or cost avoidance or other improvements in effectiveness. This section, too, carries 30% weight in the overall judging process.
Category-based Criteria
In order to make the judging process more exhaustive, in addition to the standard four criteria we have outlined, each category has an additional set of criteria to abide by.
For example, one of the most popular categories, brand activation, requires entrants to substantiate claims to demonstrate how they have achieved outstanding results through the integration of all available communication means, such as sponsorship, events, PR, advertising and promotions, in a single creative theme. The judges will evaluate the project objectives, creativity across all brand activities, evidence of effectiveness, and commercial success of the campaign.
Similarly, for the brand extension category, submissions must demonstrate the successful extension of an existing brand into new markets or market segments, to the long term commercial benefit of the original brand and its owner. The judges will evaluate customer insight, incremental sales, minimal cannibalization, effective use of marketing resources, and evidence of commercial success for all entries.
For the brand revitalization category, entrants are required to provide evidence of marketing activity that has successfully challenged public perceptions of a product or service and achieved significant commercial gain as a result. The judges will evaluate research and creative problem-solving, improved customer perceptions, rising sales/market share trends, effective use of marketing resources, and evidence of commercial success.
Another popular category, digital marketing, social media, mobile marketing is open to brands that have made effective use of social media, mobile media or any other form of digital marketing to improve their commercial performance. Companies will have to demonstrate originality of approach, evidence of commercial success, and return on marketing expenditure.
The selection process for IMA 2014 has been chalked out to recognize and reward organizations, individuals and teams who have achieved extraordinary success from innovative and effective marketing practices, having regard to the particular circumstances of different industries and diversity of marketing programmes.
