Automotive – Vehicles: Cars, trucks, motorcycles, vans. Both brand and model advertising. Gasoline, motor oil, tires, batteries, paint, quick-lube, oil change, muffler, transmission, windshield wipers, enhancements, etc.
Financial product & services including marketing efforts, promoting overall image and capabilities of a financial institution; specific products or services including credit/debit cards, reward/loyalty cards, financial planning, mobile payment services, retirement funds, Shari’ah compliant products, investment, home banking, loans, mortgage, mutual funds, etc. It also includes all types of insurance eligible (home, auto, financial, life, travel, business, etc.) with the exception of health insurance.
Includes cosmetics, fragrances, hair products, nail products, skincare treatments, salons, spas, apparel, accessories, jewelry, styling services, clothing rentals, etc.
Beverages including beer, champagne, liquor, wine, hard seltzers, wine coolers, etc. Includes diet and non-diet soda, coffee, tea, juices, milk, milk substitutes, bottled water, sparkling water, energy drinks, etc.
TVs, radios, mobile devices, home entertainment, laptops, tablets, cameras, smart home devices, computer hardware, game consoles, drones, external or integrated VR/AR devices, sound systems, etc. Electronic devices may be aimed at consumers or businesses.
Includes all forms of entertainment, e.g. apps, movies, programming (TV, online, radio), books, DVDs, videogames, podcasts, board games, toys, etc. It also includes sports equipment & sports apparels. Entries from sporting events from the sponsors of regional and international sporting events such as the World cup, sports teams, sports & leisure equipment’s etc.
All types of food including fresh packaged and frozen, both regular and diet/light.
Municipal or state economic development, lotteries, utilities, civil, diplomatic or armed forces, parks, libraries, public services, etc. Includes political messages and recruitment efforts.
All forms of e-sports and single and multi-player video games, including virtual reality, arcade, console, mobile, online & computer games.
Cleaning products, waxes, detergents, floor-care, products, fabric softener, paper products, domestic services, mowers, fertilizers, lawn care, gardening services.
Includes homecare Furnishings & Appliances like: Kitchen and laundry appliances, air conditioners, carpeting, furniture, decorator’s supplies, paint and wallpaper.
Any communications effort used to introduce a new product or service that is not a line extension. Brand new products or new products in a new category are eligible.
Line extension is defined as any variation of an existing product which shares the same brand name and is in the same category as the existing product and shares the same characteristics as the parent but offers new benefit (flavor, type, etc.)
-A derivative product that adds or modifies features without significantly changing the price.
-Products that bear the same brand name and offer the consumer varied options (e.g. Diet version of drink).
Soap, oral care, face & body lotions and cleansers, basic eye and ear-care products (e.g. cotton swabs, eye drops, etc.), deodorants, feminine hygiene products, razors, shaving cream, etc.
Note: Items focusing on beauty should be entered in the Beauty & Fragrance category
Open to all retail companies (online and/or brick & mortar) with general or specific merchandise. E.g., malls, boutiques, department stores, clothing, shoes, hosiery, jewelry stores; food retailers; movie/book/card stores; discount/bulk retailers; toy stores, branded outlets, accessories/specialty shops, purses/luggage.
Ice cream, candy, chips, cookies, bakery items, nut, fruit, & vegetable, snacks, popcorn, etc.
Mobile network providers, high speed Internet access services, online services, bundled communications (internet, telephone, and TV), Cloud Services etc.
This category is open for Air, train, bus/trolley, taxi, subway systems, rideshare services, driving schools, public transport, car rentals, leasing not including automobile sales / leasing, ferries, etc. Airlines, cruise operators, travel tours (tour operators, travel websites and booking services, etc.), hotels, resorts, amusement parks, tourism campaigns, duty free outlets and Destination Malls- defined as a mall that offers a mix of lifestyle products, leisure and entertainment activities.
Efforts for products that are sold without a prescription, and that address a specific health condition. Efforts may be targeted to healthcare professionals, patient’s and/or consumers. Only products that address a specific health condition should enter this category. There are separate categories for Beauty and Personal Care efforts. Work that is developed for hospitals, HMOs, health insurance companies, referral services, dental and medical care services, pharmacies, or chronic care facilities will be considered.
This category is for marketing efforts from businesses targeting other businesses. Business-to-business efforts for any type of products & services from any marketplace segment, are eligible to enter.
This category will honor those efforts that successfully communicate to teens or young adults.
Your entry should be written in a way that identifies how the case was created and specifically directed to this audience and how it succeeded.
Identify any elements in the creative work or strategy that are specifically directed to the youth market and any relevant dynamics and/or nuances, trends, values, linguistic characteristics, and their significance with respect to your submission. Judges may not be familiar with this particular youth audience, so this is your opportunity to showcase the details that they may miss.
This category will honor those efforts that successfully communicated to parents of children aged 12 and under.
Your entry should be written in a way that identifies how the case was created and directed to this audience and how it succeeded. For these efforts targeting children, it can be helpful for judges to include any relevant information on the restrictions and requirements that are a part of communicating to this audience.
This category is not for efforts that focused on TV, radio or print ads to connect with an audience. It is meant to showcase how you can create a brand experience beyond traditional advertising. Work that truly brought a brand or product to life and interacted with a specific audience to achieve desired objectives should be entered. You may have re-invented the product demo, re-imagined the pop-up store, or led a “brick and mortar” retail overhaul; you could have created a new game, an alternate or virutal reality experience or interactive/immersive film experience that effectively showcases a new product or brand personality – it could have been anything. As long as you can prove it truly came alive and worked. The winners of this award will show how advertisers are reaching out to their audiences to establish meaningful relationships, memorable, engaging experiences, and unique connections with their brands.
Entrants must address how the brand experience related back to the overall brand strategy. Judges will expect to understand the ‘participation’ in the experience as a core factor.
As with all Effie categories, you can enter whether your work brought the brand to life as the entire marketing effort or as part of the larger marketing program
This award will honor those brands that have effectively reached their audience via strategic integrations & entertainment partnerships. Submission should detail how the brand was seamlessly interwoven within the right content in an engaging way. Detail the strategic reasoning behind the partnership – why was this partner chosen over others? Clearly details the selection process of the partner, and explain how this partnership led to the results that met the objectives of the brand.
This category is for efforts that effectively reached their audience through the creation of original branded content that is not advertising. The award honors branded content led ideas that are the heart of the communications program. Entrants must detail the content created, how it related back to the overall brand and business goals, how it was distributed to, and shared by, the audience, and the results it achieved for the brand and business. Branded content may be produced and distributed by either publishers or independently.
This is an award for smaller, NEW, or emerging brands:
• Making inroads against big, established leaders.
• Taking on “sleeping giants”
• Moving into a NEW product/service field beyond their current category and ser for competitors to tackle a dominant leader.
Entrants must detail the business challenge, the competitive landscape, and how their business succeeded despite the odds. You are required to define you’re your competitive landscape, including the market difference between the David and Goliath to demonstrate why your brand was a David.
Judges will deduct from your case if you do not sufficiently prove that your brand is David in the situation.
This award is for efforts that grew their business / brand by changing the marketing model in ways that drive the industry forward. A marketing disruptor of any size can enter. Entrants must detail the marketing challenge, the competitive landscape and how they succeeded by changing the existing marketing model for the
brand / category.
Cases eligible for this category must represent the only marketing efforts for this brand (brand defined as listed in the “brand” question of the Effie entry form) during the time period that the effort entered ran.
To be eligible, an entry may not be for a line extension. Effie defines line extension as: a variation of an existing product with the same brand name and some category but with a new characteristic, a derivative of the product or service that offers modified features without significantly changing price; a product bearing the same name and offering a varied option (e.g. new flavor, diet version etc.)
Value of donated and non-traditional media as well as activation costs must be included.
Budget eligibility is as follows:
When completing your entry, be sure to select the appropriate category: “Small Budgets – Products” or Small Budget – Services”
Judges will deduct from your case if you do not provide a clear understanding of why your case is a fit for the Small Budgets category
Cases eligible for this category must represent the only marketing efforts for this brand (brand defined as listed in the “brand” question of the Effie entry form) during the time period that the effort entered ran.
To be eligible, an entry may not be for a line extension. Effie defines line extension as: a variation of an existing product with the same brand name and some category but with a new characteristic, a derivative of the product or service that offers modified features without significantly changing price; a product bearing the same name and offering a varied option (e.g. new flavor, diet version etc.)
Value of donated and non-traditional media as well as activation costs must be included.
Budget eligibility is as follows:
When completing your entry, be sure to select the appropriate category: “Small Budgets – Products” or Small Budget – Services”
Judges will deduct from your case if you do not provide a clear understanding of why your case is a fit for the Small Budgets category
Cases eligible for this category must represent the only marketing efforts for this brand (brand defined as listed in the “brand” question of the Effie entry form) during the time period that the effort entered ran.
To be eligible, an entry may not be for a line extension. Effie defines line extension as: a variation of an existing product with the same brand name and some category but with a new characteristic, a derivative of the product or service that offers modified features without significantly changing price; a product bearing the same name and offering a varied option (e.g. new flavor, diet version etc.)
Value of donated and non-traditional media as well as activation costs must be included.
Budget eligibility is as follows:
When completing your entry, be sure to select the appropriate category: “Small Budgets – Products” or Small Budget – Services”
Efforts that have experienced sustained success for 3 years are eligible for entry. At a minimum, the creative work and case results must date back to June 30, 2020, and you must include the current year’s results. Entries must have a common objective in both strategy and creative executions; with a continuation of core executional elements (e.g., spokesperson, song, theme, tagline, etc.) that demonstrates effectiveness over time. Answer all questions for the initial year and describe how/why change occurred over time.
To enter, you must be able to provide data about the case in its first year (June 30, 2020), an interim year and the current competition year (06/01/2022 – 07/31/2023).
Note: There is a special entry form and different creative requirements for the Sustained Success Award.
This award will feature work that truly brought a brand product or retailer to life – either literally or virtually – and interacted with shoppers to influence conversion. You may have re-invented the product demo, re-imagined the pop-p store, or led a “brick and mortar” retail overhaul, or created a new game/interactive film experience that effectively showcases a new product or brand personality. As long it truly came to alive and worked. The winners of this award will show how brands and/or retailers are reaching out to their audiences to establish meaningful relationships, memorable engaging experiences, and unique connections.
Entrants in the Brand Experience category must address how the brand experience related back to the overall brand strategy.
This award is for brands that created positive change by effectively pivoting their shopper marketing program or business activities in response to significant structural and cultural shifts (e.g. Covid 19, BLM, election, etc.) in the current landscape in order to more effectively connect with the shopper along the path to purchase and drive conversion. Entrants will need to demonstrate the effectiveness of the action for the brand. Examples can include a pivot in positioning, a change in portfolio management, a digital acceleration, etc.
This category is for campaigns that effectively used insights, strategy, creative and analytics to drive e-commerce shopper conversion. By utilizing data, and a deep understanding of the shopper, brands and retailers can succeed in an e-commerce setting.
A successful effort will combine strong shopper knowledge with digital marketing practices to increases conversion online. The effort must be based on a shopper insight(s) and be shopper-driven. Explain the strategy of how the effort went to market with e-commerce. Submission in this category will be solely evaluated on e-commerce effectiveness.
In a time when people have more choices than ever, delivering an effective omni-channel experience to shoppers is key to sustained business success. This category will look for cases that exemplify the manufacturers and retailers who have ensured an effective, connected shopper journey.
This category is meant to showcase how manufacturers and retailers are connecting the dots in their engagement strategies to ensure simple, seamless, effective experiences across shoppers’ path to purchase.
In-store, online customer service, loyalty programs, mobile apps, delivery services, social media, aisle disruption…it could entail anything – as long as you can show how it was all connected to provide a fully-integrated “shopper journey” from beginning to end.
Winners in this category will represent the best examples of manufacturers and retailers committed to providing effective omni-channel shopper programs.
Clearly identify what the strategy was, who your audience was, and why the influencer was important to your audience. Explain what the influencer did for your audience. Explain why the brand selected that influencer, how they were used to carry out marketing activities, and what consumer behaviors were impacted and how the business was impacted
This category recognizes the most effective performance marketing efforts. To participate your effort must be led by performance marketing and you must demonstrate how your effort drove results for the business using performance marketing KPIs.
Note: Entrants must use the performance marketing entry form when submitting under this category.
This category is for campaigns that set out with the explicit purpose of using social as the primary touchpoint or have social at their heart. The kind of idea that is specifically designed to take advantage of the socially connected consumer and the influence of social. Judges are looking for campaigns that begin with a social idea, as opposed to advertising or integrated campaigns with a social media element. They will need a clear rationale for why social was the right way to tackle the brief, and evidence of how social activity measurably and materially drove the commercial result. It is not enough to count the number of impressions, likes or shares. You will need to measure and prove the commercial value of social through the direct effect it had on audience behavior or perceptions and demonstrate correlation with the achieved business results.
Data-driven media is the application of data and technology to identify and match the right audiences to the right media and message at the right moments.
These efforts should prove how they specifically utilized data to optimize media to improve business outcomes (brand, KPI’s. ROI, performance marketing measures etc). The best examples will recognize the interplay and application of automation, applied technology, and human and artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver to a precise audience and achieve the best results.
To enter, your case must detail the role that data had within the media strategy in achieving the brand and business goals.
Submissions are expected to:
• Utilize personalized/custom-tailored creative messages.
• Explain how data impacted the media plan through clear measurement & analytics.
• Demonstrate the insights captured from data used to understand audience.
This is about outstanding effectiveness as a result of media-led ideas. The line between what constitutes a creative idea and a media idea is blurring. There are occasions when the media idea drove the entire effort. Of course, media cannot exist without the content, but this award is intended to recognize those cases that were led by the media thinking – where the integration of media and message led to success. The award honors media-led ideas that are powerful enough to become the genesis of the marketing program itself, to the extent that the program would not have been successful without the strategic media idea.
Changing the rules to maximize impact.
This award will showcase those who have the insight and creativity to change the way a particular media channel is consumed or to create a new channel. The award will go to those who reached out of the conventional approach to grab their audience and effectively engage with them.
Whether the effort was one execution or multiple, and/or used one engagement channel or multiple – the work must represent new and creative usage of the media channels we know and love or have not yet met.
Enter your case into one of the following categories:
Positive Change: Environmental – Brands & Non-Profit
Recognizing brands & Non profit Organizations with marketing programs that have measurably shifted audience (B2B or B2C) behavior toward more environmentally sustainable choices, and/or grown demand for more sustainable products and services by incorporating environmentally conscious messaging into their marketing.
The Positive Change Social
The Positive Change: Social Good category celebrates marketing efforts proven effective in addressing a social problem or in expanding an existing program in ways that benefit our society. This is about creating positive societal and cultural change, challenging the established status-quo and changing accepted norms and stereotypes that create societal inequalities. Examples include initiatives that tackle food poverty, access to healthcare & education, creating a more diverse and inclusive society, creating equal opportunities at work and in wider society for all members of our society.
Any effort that sets out to give back in some way for the greater good is eligible to enter. Maybe it was for profit, maybe not. Maybe you got paid, maybe you didn’t. Any and all marketing efforts, whether full campaigns or unique efforts within a campaign are eligible to enter as long as measurable results exist.
Positive Change: Social Good – Brands
Recognizing brands that are making the world a better place by using the power of their marketing platforms for “good.” This category celebrates for-profit brand efforts that effectively combined business goals with a social cause and successfully related that cause back to the company’s overall brand strategy, resulting in positive business and social impact.
The Positive Change Social
The Positive Change: Social Good category celebrates marketing efforts proven effective in addressing a social problem or in expanding an existing program in ways that benefit our society. This is about creating positive societal and cultural change, challenging the established status-quo and changing accepted norms and stereotypes that create societal inequalities. Examples include initiatives that tackle food poverty, access to healthcare & education, creating a more diverse and inclusive society, creating equal opportunities at work and in wider society for all members of our society.
Any effort that sets out to give back in some way for the greater good is eligible to enter. Maybe it was for profit, maybe not. Maybe you got paid, maybe you didn’t. Any and all marketing efforts, whether full campaigns or unique efforts within a campaign are eligible to enter as long as measurable results exist.
Positive Change: Social Good – Non-Profit
Recognizing non-profit organizations and associations whose marketing efforts have effectively driven positive change for society and successfully contributed back to the organization’s purpose. Campaigns must show measurable impact and proven results in support of the cause.
Social Good : For marketing efforts proven effective in solving / impacting a social problem or in expanding an existing program in ways that benefit our society. This is about creating positive societal and cultural change, challenging the established status-quo and changing accepted norms and stereotypes that create societal inequalities with inspired action. Examples include initiatives that tackle food poverty; access to healthcare or education; creating a more diverse, equitable and inclusive society; or creating equal opportunities at work and in wider society for all members of our society. Any effort that sets out to give back in some way for the greater good is eligible to enter, and any/all marketing efforts, whether full campaigns or unique efforts within a campaign are eligible to enter as long as measurable results exist.
Enter in the sub-category:
• Social Good – Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
• Seasonal Marketing – Products
Seasons, holidays, and annual events allow marketers to build strategic efforts based on the time-based interests of their target audience. This category will honor those efforts that effectively capitalized on a season, holiday, or annual cultural event to drive results for their business.
• Seasonal Marketing – Services
Seasons, holidays, and annual events allow marketers to build strategic efforts based on the time-based interests of their target audience. This category will honor those efforts that effectively capitalized on a season, holiday, or annual cultural event to drive results for their business.