`Globe’ Trotting: APMA assumes World PRO Award stewardship overseas.

British promotion agency The Marketing Store Worldwide cleaned up during the ninth-annual Sales Promotion Consultants Association’s Best Awards ceremony, held in February in London.

The agency won a total of four Gold awards, earning two for promotions created for Walkers Snacks and one each for campaigns for Bass Brewers and Highland Spring.

Sponsored by Marketing Week magazine, the ceremony represented the culmination of another successful Best Awards program for the SPCA, but also ushered in a new era for promo’s World PRO Awards of Excellence. While the 10-year-old World PRO program will remain relatively the same in the U.S. under the direction of promo (see story, page eight), it has undergone significant changes in the rest of the world.

Looking to segment the program to foster growth, the international end of the World PROs has been handed over to the Association of Promotion Marketing Agencies Worldwide (APMA), Stamford, CT, and been renamed the Globe Awards. APMA will now handle efforts in Latin America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, and Asia.

The Globes will work in conjunction with local awards programs throughout the world. Promotion agencies and marketers will gain entrance into the Globes by winning top awards in their own country’s national or regional programs – such as the Best Awards in the U.K. Thus, the regional World PRO awards programs that had been part of the old structure have been eliminated.

The new structure provides an easier way for the best overseas promotion campaigns to get the attention they deserve. Agencies entering awards programs in their own countries pay an extra fee that guarantees entry into the Globes should theirpromotions win locally.

“I believe the ongoing cooperation between the two associations will help accelerate the growth of professionalism and shared knowledge within the international marketing industry,” says SPCA chairman Clive Mishon.

The new structure is designed to eliminate the obstacles caused by competition with country-specific awards programs and the costs of multiple entry fees, which sometimes prevented agencies from entering the World PRO competition.

The APMA has set up ties with a dozen overseas organizations which have agreed to alter entry categories in their national programs to match Globe categories. In most cases, a local marketing shop, promotion association, or marketing magazine will coordinate events in each country.

“This is the only awards program that gives promotions agencies an easy way to get from local competitions all the way through to the Globes at such a low cost,” says Graham Kemp, APMA vp of professional recognition. Kemp expects local APMA members in participating countries to drum up support for the re-vamped program.

Globe winners will be announced during the APMA’s annual autumn conference in Miami on October 16.