By Shannine Daniel 

The Effie Awards, the most eminent award in the global marketing and advertising industries,  recognises any and all forms of marketing communication that contribute to the success of a brand.

The Effie network works with some of the best international research and media organisations to convey relevant and first‐class insights into effective marketing strategy to the global marketing and advertising communities.  

Since 1968, winning an Effie has become a global symbol of achievement. Effie celebrates effectiveness worldwide with the Global Effie, the Euro Effie, the Middle East/North Africa Effie, the Asia Pacific Effie and more than 40 national Effie programs including Effie Sri Lanka. 

Effie Sri Lanka, partnered by the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM), honours effective marketing communications across Sri Lanka.

Making his remarks to the Daily FT Effie Awards 2015 organising Committee Project Chairperson Shaminda Perera highlighted some of the key features of this year’s Effie Award Season. 

Q. What does it mean for a marketer, a brand or a communications agency to win an Effie?

A. The Effie awards are the most recognised marketing communication award ceremony that is available worldwide. Everybody who is involved in marketing, advertising and brand management or anything similar will know about the importance of winning an Effie award. It is all about effective communication. How effective your communication has been to your consumers will be clearly demonstrated and determined by winning an Effie award. This is probably the most prestigious award ceremony that is available to recognise the best work that has been done by marketers, brands and agencies. 

Q. What are the new additions to this year’s Effie Awards?

A. This year we have introduced five new categories of awards; Leisure and Recreation, New Products and Services, Health care, Sustained Success and Media Innovation. Apart from that we have included two additional parallel activities to the Effie Awards, Bright Sparks and the Effectual Marketing Forum. Bright Sparks is an activity which is focused on the youth below 30 years of age, who work for advertising agencies. It’s a competition that is focused on bringing out the creativity and the level of the knowledge within these youth. To bring about the Effectual Marketing Forum we partnered mainly with HP and JDC Technologies. This marketing forum particularly focuses on how the print medium can be used as a big solution for the day to day marketing challenges. We had two visiting speakers from India, one of the Regional Directors for HP and the HP India and Sri Lanka Country Manager, and also Ceylon biscuits Ltd CEO Imal Fonseka. 

Q. How many awards are given in total and how are they categorised?

A. When compared to the Effie Awards 2014, this year we had 60% more awards that have been won by the advertising community. We don’t have any competing categories as well. What I mean to say is that a substantial number of medals have been won this year but all these medals have been won by different companies in unique categories.

Q. What are the measures that have been taken to attract increased participation from the advertising and marketing fraternities for this year’s Effie awards?

A. As I said before we have introduced five new categories of awards. Apart from that we had a briefing for all agencies focusing on how to write a creative entry for the competition, because one thing that goes wrong at the Effie Awards is that the brief that is submitted by the contestants is not in line with what they want to communicate. So we brought in some experts in the beginning of the competition and we had a workshop on how to write a creative brief and create an effective marketing entry clip to compete in the Effie awards. We also had continuous communication with the marketing and advertising communities as to how they should compete in this competition. These are the little things we did which actually had a big impact on the Effie Awards 2015. 

Q. What were the improvements done this year to streamline the judging process?  

A. We had two independent Judging panels. Both panels had ten members, including the top heads of marketing and representatives from advertising agencies. We had a first round of the screening of the entries with the first ten member panel headed by Sampath Bank Senior DGM Tharaka Ranwala. The panel completed the first line screening and then sent an identified set of entries to the second round. Once again in the second round, we had a ten member judging panel headed by Ceylon biscuits Ltd CEO Imal Fonseka. Those were the screen lines that we have done for this year’s competition. Furthermore, the heads of the panels had to report to the head of the jury who was a well reputed marketing icon in Sri Lanka, Ruchi Gunawardena. Everything was supervised by him and every entry went through a minimum of twenty views; that was something that we did this year in order to streamline the judging process. 

Q. What is the experience of the Organising Committee, and how has it added value in putting together this year’s Effie Awards season? 

A. At the end of the day we may have the best of the best processes in mind but nothing would have made it possible for us to make this event a success without the support of a committee. We had close to ten members in the committee representing and supporting different areas such as PR activities and partnerships and marketing. Several experts who handle these types of competitions were also present on the committee. I think the organising committee was very unique this year, as we had a combination of different industries. This is probably what helped and enabled us to take the competition for 2015 to greater heights. It was good to work as a committee member because you get to know more people from different industries and it was a very interesting experience. 

SLIM’s Perspective on the Effie Awards 2015

The Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM) partnered the Effie Awards Sri Lanka to the make the advertising fraternity more accountable through the production of effective communication and creativity.

Speaking to the Daily FT SLIM President Upul Adikari revealed that the institute’s main aim was to bring in an internationally recognised competition to recognise effective brand communication efforts in the Sri Lankan business community.

“The Effie Awards are known by advertisers and agencies globally as the pre-eminent award in the industry, so as the National institute, we wanted to give an internationals hallmark event to recognise effective brand communication effort both by Marketers and advertising agencies,” emphasised Adikari.

This is what the institute has strived to achieve through eight years of partnership with Effie Awards Sri Lanka, since 2008. 

Further commenting on this project Adikari said that, “Overall SLIM has gained experience through encouraging the advertising and marketing fraternity to actively participate, as it helps to create enthusiasm and the craving to produce the winning creativity which really works for brands.” 

“It also promotes clients and agencies froming closer bonds to win as one team,” he stressed.