Earning and deserving an award

Receiving an award, just like receiving any good thing, is always a source of happiness. It makes us feel that we made a difference people care about. It makes us jump with joy and look at ourselves either with genuine humility or greater importance. The possibility of winning an award influences us to perform better or do something special. It motivates aspirants to improve their capabilities to get noticed, admired and eventually get recognized. And to the awardees, it bolsters their resolve to raise the bar and top their last winning achievement remembering the oft-repeated adage, "we are only as good as our last performance."

On the other hand, giving awards is time-consuming and intellectually and emotionally challenging. Legitimate award-giving bodies spend many hours and organizational resources to generate nominations, put together a credible team of judges, select the winners, solicit awards incentives and prizes, invite guests and attendees, sell tickets and stage the awards ceremony. To the initiating and sponsoring association, running an awards program is a great way to communicate or advertise. A start-up, unknown business club, for example, may use it as a springboard to get itself known and build credibility. And once knowledge of the award becomes widespread, the whole activity becomes popular, and its continuous mounting is made a lot easier.

An award competition gives the chosen judges a unique opportunity to explore areas they might never have encountered before. This gives the august body exposure to information, subjects and approaches that bring new knowledge or new experiences from entrants that can enrich their own. To top it all off, the best thing that can accrue from an awards program is the talented people we meet, and the professional and personal relationships we are able to open, nurture and grow – from the organizers to fellow nominees and winners.

To most industry organizations, an awards program is usually attached to a conference or other similar events. It has become an accepted way to secure participation and, in fact, has become a rich source for fund-raising. As the honorees are provided the accolades they deserve, the group that mounted the event is able to bring in funds to run other activities. It is a win-win situation for both the organizer and the awardees. The former gets to sell tables that allow the family, professional partners and colleagues of the honorees to witness the tribute; the latter has fodder they can give their publicists for a press release, pictorial spread or feature story.

In the world of business, there are a number of awards one can aspire to: the Agora, CMMA, Entrepreneur of the Year, Anvil, Gold Quill and Araw, to name a few. The 52-year-old Philippine Marketing Association (PMA), the premier organization of marketing companies and practitioners, has been at the forefront of recognizing excellence and honoring outstanding professionals and companies in the fields of marketing education, management, export, entrepreneurship, advocacy, Asia-Pacific practice and overall company operations. The institutionalization of the Agora Awards in 1979 has elevated marketing awards into a highly coveted, sought-after position.

PMA vs. PMEA

Of late, the PMA Board has brought to the attention of appropriate marketing industry bodies, practitioners and media the brewing confusion between the PMA and the Philippine Marketing Excellence Awards (PMEA). It has communicated serious concern over the alleged questionable practices of the PMEA, which reportedly has given unsubstantiated awards to over 1,000 awardees in less than a year.

PMEA supposedly selects the awardees based on votes, focus group discussions (FGDs) and market surveys, unlike other similar award-giving entities with more stringent procedures, where the nominees are pruned down to finalists who are then subjected to a battery of interviews, data verification, and a reputation check before winners are declared.

The PMA says that it is physically impossible to conduct surveys for the numerous product categories covered by the PMEA. One credible quantitative survey normally would take about three months to mount and process, and easily cost P300,000 to P500,000 depending on the number of respondents. Also, the respected research organizations in the Philippines do not accept FGDs (a properly guided one would take about four to eight weeks to conduct at a minimum cost of P 90,000 per group) as conclusive information. At best, it is a sounding board or indicative of the universal data. An FGD is never used to validate a superiority claim such as "most outstanding."

According to the PMA, the PMEA clearly does not reflect the quality standards that many organizations in the marketing profession like the AdBoard, the PANA, 4AsP, and the PMA itself have all worked so hard for to attain prestige and integrity. In addition, the PMEA is simply capitalizing either on the would-be winners’ perception that the Philippine Marketing Association is connected with the activity, or their willingness to "buy" an award for use as a marketing tool, which could influence consumers yet lead to poor choices.

Any award or recognition should be earned and bestowed on deserving professionals or companies after a careful selection process. Award-giving activities, without a doubt, can inject fresh funds to a cash-strapped industry organization via nomination or entry fees or events sponsorship money; but then again, credibility should remain a paramount concern. (Note: In the interest of a balanced discussion, the PMEA is welcome to respond to what has been expressed by the PMA in this column).

The Quill Awards

Speaking of conferences and more awards, the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Philippines, where this writer sits as deputy regional director, recently staged the prestigious Asia Pacific Communication Conference and Gold Quill (GQ) Awards at the trend-setting Greenbelt 3 Cinemas. IABC Philippines is the country’s leading public relations and corporate communication group, an official chapter of the 13,000-member IABC based in San Francisco, California. The Gold Quill Awards, the leading benchmark of communication excellence, is the Philippine version of the world GQ Awards, which attracts some 1,000 entries every year from nearly 30 countries.

This year’s Gold Quill honors went to professionals and companies who have proven that their communication programs effectively furthered the goals of their organizations – boosting revenues, saving costs, rallying employees or contributing in any other way to its projects. The awards reflected the sophisticated, cutting-edge work that increasingly defines PR in the country. Marketing and corporate communication departments know better than anyone the realities of the fragmented media landscape, where spot-on, targeted communication solutions can make or break a brand or a company’s reputation. In this milieu, PR has come into its own, steadily increasing its importance and strongly recognizing its remarkable power in shaping public opinion and response.

Whether dealing with issues management, corporate social-responsibility concerns, and utilization of PR implements, the ability of private enterprises, PR agencies, government departments, non-profit organizations and individual consultancies to appear credible often hinges on the effectiveness of its PR strategy. The winners – Ayala Corporation, Smart Communications, Globe Telecom, Pfizer, Avon, Mirant, Diwa Learning System, Unilever, Petron, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, Metrobank Foundation, to name a few – have very clear objectives that brought valuable, measurable benefits to their organizations; devised creative, effective communication programs to get there, and have been able to demonstrate measurable outcomes to prove that the goals of their respective programs have been successfully achieved.

What have we learned from the Gold Quill honorees? Ultimately, it is the fact that awardable PR programs demonstrate a key truism – stakeholder satisfaction is the best measure of success. We should be able to make our public happy, contented and empowered. We should continue to nurture the talents and skills of PR people to plan for creative, innovative, insightful solutions that can easily and confidently be put in motion.

High-quality PR work in the Philippines is fast emerging, bolstering the notion that PR has indeed evolved into a more valuable and powerful tool in our integrated communication arsenal.

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E-mail bongo@vasia.com or bongo@campaignsandgrey.net for comments, questions and or suggestions. Thank you for communicating.