IDM Business Performance Award 2000: ultimate in performance
The IDM/Experian Business Performance Award is fast becoming the ultimate accolade of a campaign's excellence.
It focuses not on the attractiveness or individuality of a promotion, but on its effectiveness in improving the client's bottom line over the longer term.
"The IDM/Experian Business Performance Award's keen focus on what has been achieved by means of direct marketing rather than how it has been achieved makes it a coveted prize for client and agency alike.
The event itself has been around for a shorter time than many of the entries vying for the top prize. This underlines the message that the most successful examples of direct marketing are borne neither of a knee-jerk reaction to increase sales rapidly, nor of a unilateral direct marketing process that presumes a typical minimum response rate. At the heart of every exemplary direct marketing strategy is a CRM programme, designed to evolve alongside the customer over the long term.
It is these model strategies that the IDM Business Performance Award was launched to recognise and that the IDM strives continually to nurture. The focus of the Award—direct marketing's proven contribution to the measured business performance of the product or service it promotes—does not make eligibility or entry easy. The application process involves providing a detailed business plan and assembling performance figures that prove beyond doubt that the direct marketing strategy has generated a substantial volume of business in its own right.
Each and every one of the finalists in 2000 provided that proof. They demonstrated that strategically applied direct marketing builds businesses, shapes products and improves services. Having read all of those entries and attended the judging, I have no reservation in passing on my personal congratulations to the seven finalists. Meeting the entry criteria and getting through the first rigorous judging stage is a Herculean task.
The gold winner has joined the exclusive list of past winners that continue to prosper through direct means. Its achievement suggests that the NSPCC, like Goldfish and Legal & General, will enjoy continued growth in years to come."
David Payne M IDM
Chairman, IDM
"Experian continued to sponsor the Business Performance Award in 2000 because, of all the awards out there, this is the one that assesses the science and the strategy.
Direct marketing has long been heralded the most measurable arm of marketing communications and, equipped with new technologies and techniques, we are beginning to see the measure of that accountability taken, as it were, to the nth degree. Experian has therefore been delighted to support an award that recognises and rewards excellence in the gathering, analysis and application of data to improve business performance.
The finalists and winners you will be reading about have two attributes in common. First, they all demonstrated excellent strategic thinking, expertise and application of techniques. Second, and more importantly, the strategies they have adopted are capable of sustaining continued, improved business performance."
David Coupe F IDM
Managing Director, Experian
All coverage of the IDM Business Performance Award 2000 has been reproduced with kind permission from Marketing Week. |  |
