Long Way to Come, A Long Way to Go

By the time you read this, winners will have been named from Australia for the Asia-Pacific region and from Argentina for the Latin America region (see coverage in Overseas), and the 1999 World PRO Awards of Excellence in Promotion Marketing will be on its way to a record 503 entries from agencies and companies in 22 countries. Last year’s total was a record, too: 370 entries, all told.

Still to come, of course, was the North American regional judging on July 20 in Chicago, for which U.S. and Canadian campaigns were entered. (European winners were announced in the June promo.)

Yes, the PROs have come a long way. Today, they are not merely the premier awards program in the U.S., but the only truly international one in the promotion marketing industry. But there still is a long, long way to go.

Given promotion’s phenomenal growth as the marketing discipline of choice that it is in dozens of countries, there ought to be far more than a paltry 500 or so entries in such a far-flung worldwide competition. Indeed, to produce a group of 60 outstanding finalists, there ought to be a field of more than 1,000 starters.

The reason there aren’t, we’re convinced, is that too many would-be participants either (a) don’t know about the program, (b) already participate in other programs, or (c) find this one too complex or costly to enter. To address these issues in the year 2000 and beyond, we’ve agreed to some changes in the way the program is carried out.

promo’s interest in this fun but profit-less enterprise (in case you were wondering) is only partly selfish: We derive a wealth of insights and editorial material from the campaigns and companies we cover. But much of the info gets to you as news, trends, feature articles, or campaign case histories. So everybody benefits.

Our pact with the Association of Promotion Marketing Agencies Worldwide (APMA) will continue. promo and APMA will work with promo’s network of leading marketing magazine editors outside the U.S. And – this will be brand new for 2000 – the APMA will begin to work with in-country marketing organizations, and with those organizations’ own media partners, such as Marketing Week in the U.K., and Marketing in Canada. As in the past, promo has exclusive rights to advertise and publish results of the awards programs in the U.S.

The idea is to broaden and increase participation by including, rather than duplicating or going around, programs already in place for recognizing promotion excellence around the world.

Thus, U.K. winners of the Institute for Sales Promotion’s year 2000 awards will, for a modest step-up fee, become finalists in competition for the worldwide awards, where work will be judged by an international jury selected by promo and the APMA. This goes for Belgium, France, Italy, and other countries whose promotion industries either have, or may soon have, associations running awards programs of their own: Winners from those programs will be finalists in the promo/APMA program. promo’s responsibility, in addition to running the U.S. awards and producing the finals presentation, is to continue to work with APMA and our media partners to provide the advertising and publicity that are the lifeblood of the worldwide program, and to encourage the development of local programs from which global entries can be generated.

Thus, in countries such as Argentina and Australia, where associations exist but have no formal awards mechanisms, promo and local APMA members will work with media partners and local associations to help develop national programs.

One big change in 2000, in the interest of saving time as well as substantially reducing the costs (for shipping, customs, travel, meeting facilities) and complexity of the program, will be the elimination of regional judging. In its place will be national programs, with the winners going straight to the worldwide judging.

Appropriately, the name, image, and shape of the trophy to be given to winners starting with the year 2000 will be those of a globe – so the program will probably come to be known as the Globe, rather than the PRO, awards.

To eliminate the temptation for a variety of mischief that occurs from time to time, jury panels will be composed, wherever possible, of client-side marketers rather than agency executives. This APMA Worldwide recommendation worked wonders this year in Australia, the home of many such shenanigans in the past.

But we’re sure they’ll find other ways to keep us on our toes.