The ANA is launching an awards program honoring in-house marketing teams to recognize and celebrate the impact their work has on their companies and brands.
The ANA In-House Excellence Awards will feature nine categories that will showcase the most creative, strategic, and growth-driving marketing and advertising campaigns created by an in-house agency team or department. Any marketing asset or project created to promote a company’s brand, product, or service that ran at any time in 2020 is eligible to enter the competition.
“The days when in-house teams are only tapped for quick and inexpensive work are long gone,” said ANA CEO Bob Liodice. “Today’s in-house teams lead creative and media strategy, produce broadcast-quality commercials, and drive business results for their brands. It is time they are recognized for the great, substantive work they’re doing.”
The competition is open to anyone working as part of an internal team, whether within a client-side marketer, retailer, media company, nonprofit, or educational institution. Both ANA members and nonmembers can participate.
Categories
The In-House Excellence Award categories are:
- Branded Content: Original content created to support the marketing strategy of a brand that engaged, entertained, or informed a target audience. Any creative content not viewed as “advertising” is eligible.
- Experiential: Efforts that engaged with a target audience either live/in-person or via a virtual/on-demand experience.
- Integrated Campaign: Campaigns that utilized three or more distinct media channels to engage a target audience with a single unified theme or message.
- Internal Communications: Communication initiatives in any creative format that engaged and informed employees and provided understanding of a company’s vision, goals, values, work culture, and/or D&I initiatives.
- Social Media: Best use of social media to achieve a brand or company’s marketing objectives.
- Socially Responsible: All types of creative that directly address current social issues.
- Best Collaborative Effort: A showcase for the best and most successful collaborative efforts involving in-house teams and their external agencies.
- Best Media Thinking: Best formula for when, where, and how a target audience receives a creative message. This category will showcase in-house media teams that developed the best mix of media for reaching their target audience.
- Significant Results: Entries in this category will need to demonstrate with facts and figures the effectiveness of their work and its positive contribution to building a brand and expanding a business.
The event culminates with the Best in Show announcement, honoring the overall best entry chosen from the category winners.
Judging
A jury of leading marketers and agencies will review and score entries, with strategy, creative execution, and results being given equal weight.
The Significant Results category will give results 50 percent weight, with strategy and creative execution given 25 percent each.
One winner and up to two finalists will be recognized in each category. The program will accept entries from now through June 18. Winners will be announced at a virtual awards celebration on September 21, which will culminate with a “Best in Show” award winner honoring the single overall best entry.
Additional information and entry forms for the competition can be accessed here.
ESPN and other channels return to DirecTV with a new Disney deal after a nearly 2-week blackout
DirecTV announced Saturday it had reached a deal with Walt Disney Co. that will restore ESPN and ABC-owned stations to its service after a nearly 2-week dispute that blacked out those networks for millions of viewers across the U.S.
The end of the impasse came in time for sports fans to watch ESPN's slate of college football games on DirecTV. It also will ensure that ABC's telecast of the Emmy Awards on Sunday night will be available in more major markets where viewers subscribe to DirecTV's pay service.
ABC had been unavailable since Sept. 1 on DirecTV in several markets where the station is owned by Disney. Those were located in the San Francisco Bay Area; Fresno, California; New York; Chicago; Philadelphia; Houston; and Raleigh, North Carolina.
DirecTV's 11 million subscribers abruptly lost access to ESPN, the ABC-owned stations and other Disney-owned channels such as FX and National Geographic during the Labor Day weekend in a dispute over carriage fees and programming flexibility.
Some viewers were watching the fourth round of the U.S. Open tennis tournament when ESPN suddenly went dark and others were getting ready to watch a college football showdown between LSU and Southern California.
The impasse also kept the NFL's opening game of Monday Night Football off of DirecTV's service.
Financial details of Disney's new deal with DirecTV weren't disclosed as part of Saturday's announcement. DirecTV's payments to Disney will be based on "market-based" pricing, according to the announcement about the deal.
The agreement also will give DirecTV the ability to offer Disney's video streaming services a la carte as well as in its own bundled packages. DirecTV won the right to include ESPN's forthcoming direct-to-consumer... Read More