Prize Management specialists Black Tomato Agency have recently added to their team with the appointment of Molly Harrison as a Prize Executive in the London Office and Charlie Rooney as Business Development Manager in the Manchester office.

Looking to bring much needed support off the back of new account wins for the agency, these appointments will bolster the team, who have claimed Gold, Silver and Bronze in the Prize, Incentive and Reward category at the IPM COGS Awards (an industry first), in 2016 and 2017.

Charlie Rooney will be driving all new business and comes the added benefit of having worked at Black Tomato previously. Black Tomato Agency offer a range of services to agencies and brands alike, from prize management to content creation, group incentives and strategy, an immediate understanding of client requirements and delivering to meet those needs is more important than ever.

Molly Harrison joins the Promotions Team with an events management background which enables her to immediately support the group incentive side of the business.

Andrew Rae, Head of Promotional Marketing at Black Tomato Agency said; “Traditional prize management has evolved so rapidly in the past few years, as has the portfolio of services that we offer, that we need the right team to deliver against our changing client needs.”

These most recent hires are a sign of the agency’s continuing drive to ‘create remarkable experiences that inspire.’

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The IPM COGS Awards 2018, the awards and recognition programme for service agencies – the providers of specialist services which are used to build promotional campaigns – is now open for entries. The entry deadline is July 19 2018.

The Institute of Promotional Marketing (IPM) launched The IPM COGS Awards eight years ago as a recognition programme for the work of specialist services agencies, to run alongside the IPM Awards, which are for creative agencies.

Richard Pink, Head of Awards at the IPM, says: “The IPM COGS is the most important awards programme for the promotional industry’s service agencies – they give deserved recognition to the companies behind the scenes who make sure that everything runs like clockwork. They are the awards for the unsung heroes of our industry.”

Entry is open to any company from a range of business sectors which support great promotional marketing campaigns – handling, print, staffing, digital, mobile, event and risk management, to name but a few.

Companies do not have to be IPM members to enter (except for the IPM COGS Awards 2018 Service Agency of the Year Special Award, which is only open to IPM members). IPM members enjoy the advantage of paying lower entry costs, however.

The online awards entry platform has been updated and streamlined, to make the entry process even easier than in previous years. In order to submit an entry, you will need to register for this new awards platform – https://theipm.awardsplatform.com/

The IPM – the marketing industry trade body which represents the interests of brands and organisations which use promotional techniques to target their audiences and also of the agencies and service providers which advise them – is encouraging members and non-members alike to seize the opportunity to show the world how their contributions have helped create world-class campaigns.

Now in its eighth year, The IPM COGS awards programme is constantly setting benchmarks and driving up the standard or promotional campaigns.

A full list of the 2017 winners can be found on the IPM website. 

The full list of categories for The COGS Awards 2018 is below:

• Coupons
• Print Management
• Risk Management
• Digital
• Promotional Merchandise
• Experiential and Event
• Handling and Fulfilment
• Staffing
• Direct Marketing
• Loyalty
• Prize, Incentive and Reward
• Innovation
• Multi Territory

In addition to the industry and sector categories, there are three special awards:

• The IPM COGS Awards Service Agency of the Year
• The IPM COGS Awards Breakthrough Company of the Year
• The Grand Prix

Information on the criteria for each category and how the special awards are selected can be found on the IPM website. Alternatively, download the IPM COGS Awards 2018 Handbook which also includes details of how to enter, timings and costs.

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Great marketing campaigns don’t happen without clients willing to risk going out on a limb, says Andrew Rae of The Black Tomato Agency

My cousin and I share a long running joke. Whenever we see an off-the-wall advertising campaign, hear the ludicrous name of a new band or are told the plot line to a forthcoming farfetched film, we look at each other and say: “Imagine the faces in the presentation when this was pitched!”

For example, imagine the convincing and coercing you would have to do to get ‘Snakes on a Plane’ off the ground…

Or, for an example from the advertising world, imagine ad agency VCCP’s pitch to the Compare the Market marketing team for the ‘Compare the Meerkat’ TV campaign. TV ads featuring an aristocratic Russian meerkat called Aleksandr Orlov, annoyed because people were visiting their site – www.comparethemeerkat.com – when they were really looking for car insurance?

Yet Aleksandr and his family and friends have become the backbone of one of the most successful marketing campaigns in the financial services sector ever – and the promotional element has seen more than a million meerkat toys handed out to people as rewards for taking out a range of Compare the Market insurance products.

The Meerkat campaign launched in 2009; within a very short period of time, comparethemarket.com was ranked as the fourth most visited insurance website in the UK, up from 16th in January 2008, while the site’s overall sales doubled. By 2010 the site had increased its market share by 76%, where competitors’ share had fallen by up to 30% over the same period. 700,000 Facebook fans, 22,000 followers on Twitter, Coronation Street sponsorship and rumoured record deals later it is widely regarded as one of the most successful campaigns of the last 10 years.

But can you imagine the faces in the presentation when this was pitched?

VCCP has won huge numbers of industry awards for the Meerkats; but in reality should we be thanking someone else for giving us Orlov? I think we should. Hats off to the client.

To have the absolute vision, the trust in a supplier, the confidence, the ‘arm-chancery’ to throw caution to the wind and completely commit to someone’s else’s wild creativity is where the real credit should lie.

Anybody who, like us, has won their fair share of industry awards will be very, very aware that the real winners are the clients. They are the ones who allowed us the free reign to be creative, to suggest untried techniques, to do what we do best.

We work with some of the biggest names in their industry sectors; it is widely believed that the larger the brand, the more risk adverse they are and the harder it is to guide them out of their comfort zone. But that is exactly what our role as agencies and suppliers should be – to convince our clients that we can help them by doing something unique and different and that they should trust our ideas.

Think back 11 years to 2007. A TV ad starts with a close-up of a gorilla. Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” plays in the background. The camera pulls back to reveal the gorilla is sitting in a music studio. It sniffs. It rolls its neck, loosens its shoulders… And then it starts drumming.

It is hard to forget the impact that the Cadbury’s Gorilla ad had in 2007. But just imagine that client pitch. Created to convey the message that “all communications should be as effortlessly enjoyable as eating the bar itself,” the ad was the centrepiece of a £6.2 million campaign. And in 2016, it was voted the UK’s favourite ad of all time in a poll conducted by Campaign magazine.

This is quite possibly the best example of a brand taking a massive (albeit calculated) leap outside of its comfort zone.

But did it change behaviour, and was it a success?

The commercial was uploaded to video sharing website YouTube shortly after it first aired, and was viewed over 500,000 times in the first week. As of November 2007, it has been viewed over six million times. Cadbury reported that sales of Dairy Milk had increased by 9%. A YouGov poll showed that 20% more people looked favourably on the brand in the period after the advert’s general release than in the previous period. It won a host of awards, including Pica d’Or for Film 2007, the Grand Cristal at Festival de la Publicité de Méribel and Gold at the British Television Advertising Awards 2008.

Wonderbra even created their own version of the film, with the Cadbury slogan, “A glass and half full of joy,” being replaced with “Two cups full of joy.”

To use a phrase that has now become common parlance, the point I am making is ‘simples’. Creative campaigns are nothing without the progressive attitude and confidence of our clients. Confidence in a) being bold and setting themselves apart from their competition and b) confidence in their suppliers to make it happen.

So next time you see the results from a prestigious industry awards scheme – like the IPM Awards – or you see a brillant piece of creative marketing, make sure you credit the clients as well as the people who put the campaigns together. They’re the ones whom deserve the applause, because they’re the ones who put their brands on the line.

Without courageous clients, our greatest ideas will always remain just that – ideas.

Andrew Rae is Head of Promotional Marketing at the prize and rewards specialist The Black Tomato Agency, which in 2017 won Gold, Silver and Bronze in the Prize, Reward and Incentive category of the IPM COGS Awards for the second year running. The Black Tomato Agency creates unique, brand-relevant travel incentives and reward programmes around the world, tailored precisely to the client’s audience and specific needs to obtain maximum ROI.

The Black Tomato Agency is a member of the Institute of Promotional Marketing, and Andrew Rae was elected to the IPM’s Board in December 2017.

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The events and experiential industries can benefit from specialist apps, says Greg Lusk of Liveforce. SPONSORED COMMENT

The role of technology should be to make our lives easier.  Innovations in streamlining, problem solving and improving communication are leading us towards a greener, happier technological utopia.  We may not be there yet, but in the last 10 years there has been a huge shift as investment in software and mobile applications continues to rise at a healthy rate.

Our relationship with technology is stronger than ever, with smartphone users spending 90% of their time on mobile apps rather than browsers.

Mobile apps have changed the way we shop, the way we work, the way we date, the way we manage our time and communicate. Now we are seeing significant growth in apps designed to help ease the burdens of our working day, particularly in the events and promotional industries.

Technology and the promo event manager

Great promo events don’t just happen.  There’s a lot of hard work behind the scenes, most of which falls on the shoulders of Event Managers, who have a special set of juggling skills.

On any given day, there are brand ambassador and freelance staff to collaborate with, venues to coordinate, a long list of tasks to check off, pressure to increase attendance – and all of this within strict deadlines.  The outcome is time-consuming and stressful.

Yet the events industry has been relatively slow on the uptake to digitise.  Notoriously analogue, surrounded by paperwork, a typical planning wall has traditionally been covered in post-it notes and cross checked with excel spreadsheets.

There’s no need for that any more, however. In recent years, developers have been designing software to help streamline tasks and salvage the sanity of the over-worked stressed out events manager by.

Arguably, we are now firmly in the age of automation, and the digitisation of Event Management is revolutionising and professionalising the industry.

Impact of the ‘Gig Economy’

One area where technology has particularly changed lives is in employment – and in driving the growth of the so-called ‘gig economy’. The whole process of finding freelance work is now easier and much more rewarding.  An estimated 5 million UK workers are now employed through staffing apps and platforms.

These are replacing more traditional modes of employment with a system which offers a far more flexible working schedule, and one which many believe drives productivity and performance. Mobile devices are the gateway to a more agile and responsive workforce, regardless of where they are.

Event management software leading industry growth

The Events and Experiential industries are going through an exciting growth period.  Automation is a culmination of a multi-decade evolution.  It seeks to change the traditional experience of event planning, moving away from the current complex and manually intensive model.  Event Management Software is a fast-growing sector.  Forecasts suggested a growth from $5.44 billion in 2016 to $9.28 billion in 2020, a CAGR increase of 11.3%.

Factors pushing growth

• Smartphone users increase – 203% increase in mobile app usage at live events.
• Expectations – most attendees will assume there is an app for the event. They want to engage and enhance their experience.
• Rising budgets for events.
• Use of cloud platform.
• Existing products.

This leads to a need for products that have the capabilities to constantly change, adapt and improve.

There’s an App for that…

Born from the need to digitise, there are a number of products available that can problem-solve for event planners or improve the delegate experience.

Among others, Etouches, Bizaboo and CVent provide an all-in-one offering.  Eventbrite is a well-known and widely-used ticketing site that also successfully attracts attendees.  Boomset allows guests to check in and print their badge in one easy click.  Then there are experientials, like the Savor Band from Event Farm.  There is constant innovation in these areas, year after year.

Automation improves efficiency, saves time and sanity

The benefits of Event Management Automation are reduced stress and increased productivity for managers, this in turn has a positive impact on ROI.  Event Managers are reporting improved communication and tracking, the ability to create complex plans in minutes – all of which allows them to be more strategic & productive. This gives EMA users a competitive edge.

Taking promotional staffing software a step further

For the Events Industry and Promo Agencies, there are particular struggles and staffing issues are nuanced.  Managing multiple projects, multiple staff members, scheduling and sourcing crew used to result in hours spent scouring databases or excel spreadsheets or on the phone chasing staff or payroll.

The future of events and promotional planning lies in the development of apps with seamless integration and good user experience.

Greg Lusk is Founder of Liveforce AS, which offers an online automated freelancer booking and management tool for event and promo agencies.  It enables managers to easily recruit and manage crew, create job boards, manage timesheets and expenses.   With more and more freelancers, crew and promotional staff to manage, an interactive, powerful and flexible App will drive productivity.

Liveforce addresses the problems faced by event planners, managers and promotional agencies and delivers an app that resolves these issues.  The aim is to make working in the events and promo industries easier to manage for both organisers and freelancers, ultimately enriching the customer experience.

Liveforce is a sponsor of the IPM COGS Awards 2017.

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Integrated marketing communications agency Text100 triumphed at the IPM COGS 2017 awards ceremony today, taking the Grand Prix and also a Gold in the Innovation category for creating the world’s first pizza box which is also a playable DJ turntable.

Working with interactive print specialists Novalia, Text100 created the innovative promotional packaging and related campaign on behalf of client Pizza Hut. The box features conductive ink which lets people mix and scratch tracks by pressing on and stroking the cardboard. The DJ Pizza Box includes turntables, cross-fader, pitch volumes, cue buttons and ‘rewind’ controls, and syncs via Bluetooth to smartphones or laptops running DJ software.

One judge said the entry was “a great innovative solution which added real value and excitement to the consumer and delivered fantastic results.” Another just said: “Wow, I wish I’d thought of that!”

The IPM COGS Company of the Year 2017 award went to The Flash Pack, which provides a range of innovative photographic and image-related services to brands, agencies, events and venues. The judges said that The Flash Pack has “carved out a unique proposition which delivers fantastic results for their clients” and which has “revolutionised the photo opportunity and made a significant impact on the industry.”

Other big winners at The IPM COGS Awards 2017, now in its eighth year, included:

• Digital employee and customer engagement company 3radical, which took a Gold and two Silvers;
• Prize sourcing and management firm The Black Tomato Agency, which took Gold, Silver and Bronze in the same category (the second time it has achieved this feat);
• Umbrella, which won Gold, Silver and Bronze awards across different categories;
• and Adare International, Pro-Ad and MRM, which all received Gold and Silver trophies.

The IPM COGS Awards 2017 celebration lunch was held on Friday September 22^nd, 2017 at the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel in London’s historic St Pancras Station. The host for the event was award-winning stand-up comedian, writer and TV star, Tom Allen.

The COGS Awards were launched by the IPM in 2010 to recognise the huge contribution made by marketing services providers to the success of promotional campaigns.

The full list of winners, covering 14 industry, channel and specialist categories, plus the two Special Awards, can be found on the IPM website.

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Award-winning marketing services business MRM (Multi Resource Marketing Ltd) has launched a new brand identity following the company’s management buy-back from French group HighCo last year.

The new identity has been chosen following a full review of its previous branding overseen by Managing Director Marc Rigby, who was appointed in February 2017. The business undertook a number of internal workshops to help understand the critical components of its operation and define how it wants to be seen in the market.

Marc Rigby says: “We are proud to be able to announce the launch of our brand new logo. We’d like to think this identity captures some of the core elements that make up our business – process, digital, flexibility – as well as using a colour pallet that conveys energy, purpose and a greater sense of modernity. With the logo now in place alongside a revised mission and vision, our next task is an overhaul of our website which we hope to complete before the summer’s end.”

Rigby joined from shopper marketing agency Howell Penny, where he had been Client Director. Rigby has also worked at Interfocus, IMP and Saatchi & Saatchi. Founding partner Peter Kerr took on the new role of Executive Chairman following Rigby’s appointment, while former Chairman Mike Wood became Strategic Director.

Established in 1993, MRM was acquired by the French-based HighCo Group in 2011 but established its independence following a Management Buy-Out in 2016. Now again independently-owned, it is based in Market Harborough, Leicestershire and has strong industry links via the Institute of Promotional Marketing. MRM provides both digital and physical (fulfilment) marketing campaign support to some of the UK’s best-known brands. It numbers the Department of Health, The Co-operative Group and British Gas amongst its 70-strong client-base across a wide range of industry sectors.

In the 2016 IPM COGS Awards for marketing services providers, MRM won the Grand Prix for its work on the 2016 Sport Relief campaign on behalf of Comic Relief. It also won Gold for the same campaign in both the Handling & Fulfilment and Direct Marketing categories.

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All the companies which supply essential elements to translate great creative ideas into brilliant promotional marketing campaigns need to get their entries in for the IPM COGS Awards 2017 – the entry deadline is just three weeks away, at 23:59pm on Thursday, July 13 2017.

The Institute of Promotional Marketing (IPM) launched The COGS Awards seven years ago as a recognition programme for service partners to run alongside the IPM Awards, which are for the creative element of promotional campaigns.

Entry is open to any company from a range of business sectors which support great promotional marketing campaigns – handling, risk, print, staffing, digital, event and risk management to name but some.

Companies do not have to be IPM members to enter (although members pay lower costs) and the Institute – the marketing industry trade body which represents the interests of brands and organisations which use promotional techniques and the agencies and service providers which advise them — is encouraging members and non-members alike to seize the opportunity to show the world how their contributions have helped create world-class campaigns.

Now in its seventh year, The IPM COGS awards programme is constantly setting benchmarks and driving up the standard or promotional campaigns.

Examples of last year’s award-winning work can be found on the IPM website.

The full list of categories for The COGS Awards 2016 is below:

• Coupons
• Print Management
• Risk Management
• Digital
• Promotional Merchandise
• Experiential and Event
• Handling and Fulfilment
• Staffing
• Direct Marketing
• Loyalty
• Prize, Incentive and Reward
• PR and Marketing Communications
• Partnership and Sponsorship
• Innovation
• Multi Territory
• The IPM COGS Awards Company of the Year.

Information on the criteria for each category is on the IPM website https://www.theipm.org.uk/awards/COGS-Awards/The-IPM-COGS-Awards-2017-Categories.aspx as are details of how to enter, timings and costs.

You have to be logged in to the IPM site to view details of how to enter, but registration is free.

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Prize promotion specialist The Black Tomato Agency has added another new hire to bolster its team with the appointment of Ellie Clarke as Fulfilment Manager.

Andrew Rae, Head of Promotional Marketing at The Black Tomato Agency, says: “Winner fulfilment is at the very core of our service offering. The hard work initially invested in a campaign from a plethora of different agencies, all responsible for varying touchpoints of the promotion, can be undone with anything but perfect winner fulfilment.”

Clarke joins the team with years of experience already under her belt, gained from working in Melbourne for corporate events and leisure specialists Encore Journeys and, prior to that, in consumer insight. Rae says that her knowledge of how to deliver intricate, group experiences as well as tangible ROI reflects the kind of brief that Black Tomato are more regularly delivering.

Rae observes: “We are seeing an increase in brands wanting to deliver more complex itineraries, multi-centre experiences and those that reward groups of people, not the standard ‘trip for two’ prizes. Ellie’s experience and contacts, and the in-house expertise The Black Tomato Agency has with its sister agencies, means we have an unparalleled access to the skills required to deliver ‘remarkable experiences that inspire’.”

The Black Tomato Agency is part of The Black Tomato Group, a collection of innovative teams – Promotions, Agency, Leisure and Studio – headquartered in Shoreditch, London. under one creative roof. The Black Tomato Agency creates, manages and fulfils prize experiences and curates and delivers ground breaking group travel experiences all over the world on behalf of some of the world’s top brands, agencies and companies. It won Gold, Silver and Bronze in the Prize and Rewards category of the 2016 COGS Awards, an industry first.

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The IPM has launched The COGS Awards 2017, the recognition programme for service partners, and is encouraging members and non-members alike from business sectors such as handling, risk, print, staffing, digital, event and risk management to seize the opportunity to show the world how their contributions have helped create world-class campaigns.

Now in its seventh year, The IPM COGS awards programme is constantly setting benchmarks and driving up the standard or promotional campaigns.

Examples of last year’s award-winning work can be found on the IPM website.

The full list of categories for The COGS Awards 2017 is below:

• Coupons
• Print Management
• Risk Management
• Digital
• Promotional Merchandise
• Experiential and Event
• Handling and Fulfilment
• Staffing
• Direct Marketing
• Loyalty
• Prize, Incentive and Reward
• PR and Marketing Communications
• Partnership and Sponsorship
• Innovation
• Multi Territory
• The IPM COGS Awards Company of the Year.

Finally, the IPM COGS Awards 2017 Grand Prix will be awarded to the entry which, in the eyes of the judges, demonstrates best-in-class service provision for a promotional marketing campaign.

Information on the criteria for each category is on the IPM website as are details of how to enter, timings and costs.

You have to be logged in to the IPM site to view details of how to enter, but registration is free.

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Award winning marketing services, handling and fulfilment business MRM has named ex-Howell Penny Client Director Marc Rigby as Managing Director.

Founding partner Peter Kerr had become Executive Chairman, while Chairman Mike Wood has now taken on the role of Strategic Director.

Before working for brand strategy and activation agency Howell Penny, Marc Rigby worked at agencies including Interfocus, IMP and Saatchi & Saatchi.

The management changes cap a successful 12 months for the business in which MRM were recognised with four IPM COGS Awards, including the prestigious Grand Prix for their work on the 2016 Sport Relief Campaign.

The Market Harborough business – now in its 24th year of trading – concluded an MBO last year following five years as part of the French based HighCo Group. It numbers the Department of Health, The Co-operative Group and British Gas amongst its 70-strong client base across a wide range of industry sectors.

Peter Kerr says: “Whilst last year was hugely exciting for the business, that success needs to be the platform for accelerated growth; the marketing environment in which we operate is evolving. We are no longer just a service company – we are a service agency offering a wide range of marketing solutions. And to ensure our business model is in line with the needs of the market, I wanted to bring some fresh skills into the company from the world of agency and brand marketing. Marc’s background will help us augment our delivery capability and build the breadth of service we can offer to our clients. Along with Mike Wood, our former Chairman and M&A specialist, I will be devoting more time to exploiting some key strategic opportunities that we have identified in the market.”

Marc Rigby comments: “I was astounded not only by the core traditional skill sets here but by the levels of digital expertise inherent within MRM. We are well positioned to deliver a wide range of marketing service solutions as both a strategic and tactical partner. I am looking forward to the challenge of blending our processes, data and people to help our clients connect their brands, products and services with their audiences.”

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