Can winning industry awards help sell products and services? According to the Influencer Marketing book, the answer is no:

“Industry awards are primarily self-congratulatory ‘feel good’ exercises, which have limited marketing value and all but zero influence on the top decision-makers.”

– Nick Hayes and Duncan Brown

They do credit awards with some value in the early stage of a decision process, such as in response to a Request For Proposal.

Is that the practical extent of the value of an industry award?

I agree with them insofar as few industry awards have the impact of the Oscars. However, that seems more a shortcoming of the typical awards organizer than the nature of awards in general.

Every industry has its awards programs that amount to little more than karaoke. It pays to avoid those. Or, bury them.

Likewise, every industry has its awards programs that do matter.

As with all forms of influence, the trick is knowing which is which.

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Analyst relations played a key role in the tech-oriented public relations campaigns that won PRSA Silver Anvil Awards this year. The PRSA awards recognize campaigns demonstrating the best of public relations practices in forging public reputation. This year, competition for the awards included more than 600 entries across numerous campaign categories. Award-winning campaigns for technology companies that incorporated analyst relations as a strategic element are:

• Brightmail, Inc. and agency Connecting Point Communications: Making Spam History
• CheckFree Corporation and agency Schwartz Communications: Next Wave of Online Bill Payers
• Hewlett-Packard and Omnicom agencies Porter Novelli and Kaleidoscope: A New Focus

Browse 2-page summaries of the winning campaigns at the PRSA site. Bronze winners are also listed.

Source: www.PRSA.org

Reprinted from Tekrati

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