This year’s Australian Effie Awards for effectiveness will include a new category intended to recognize marketing efforts that go beyond advertising.
Announcing the call for entries for this year’s Effies, awards chairman Matthew Melhuish revealed there will be a new Best Marketing Campaign category.
The revamped Effie Awards – a joint effort by The Communications Council and the Australian Association of National Advertisers - are in their second year.
Melhuish, who is also CEO of BMF, said of the new category: “It is trying to offer the opportunity for someone to talk about a campaign that may include some advertising but could get much bigger than that.”
The criteria for the category is to “showcase how a business can generate effectiveness using multiple aspects of the marketing mix including pricing, communications, product/ packaging, distribution and (if appropriate) service”.
Meanwhile, judge Joe Talcott, chairman of the AANA, said that a winning entry took “a brave client, an innovative agency and pretty fair success”.
And Scott Davis, strategy planning director at Leo Burnett said that the secret of writing a winning entry was in making a simple argument, telling a straightforward tale and putting it in plain language, which he dubbed “wifey speak”.
He said: “You’ve got to use normal language – I call it wifey speak.
“You need to state the problem clearly and you need to show clear linkage between results, the problem and the challenges.”
He added: “Data is king, and to get access to that you need to involve your client.”
