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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Cross-border promotions can be let down by a lack of consistency in recruiting and training promotional staff, says Carina Filek of Elevate Staffing UK & US

Sourcing the right promotional staff to work on a campaign is crucial. If you don’t have the right people at the heart of your strategy, then no amount of planning or creativity, or the quality of the actual product for that matter, will make a difference – the initiative will fail.

But what happens when a client requires multiple teams in multiple geographic markets? Usually, the solution will be to engage with several agencies covering different countries to allow the campaign to achieve the desired reach.

However, this can cause a number of headaches, including a lack of consistency, along with an inefficient use of client time managing multiple partners, all delivering the same product.

We all love a challenge, but when you need to execute an international campaign, you’re going to want some peace of mind. As the client, you’re going to want much more than a vague promise and a handful of hope. With stats showing that 76% of marketers say their event and experiential marketing initiatives are integrated with their other marketing campaigns, can you afford for your multi market event campaign to fall short?

Clients need a unique approach to recruitment to ensure that the talent hired is bespoke for any given project. Depending on the nature of the campaign, promotional staff may need to be highly skilled at a range of different things. That means they’ll almost certainly need bespoke training in order to present themselves as true brand advocates and experts.

To deliver successful and seamless international staffing campaigns, we believe there are four essential things to get right.

Local knowledge

When it comes to carrying out an effective campaign, local knowledge of the host locations is huge. Utilsing a staffing partner to provide a coordinated global approach makes sense from an efficiency perspective but it’s important to ensure there is also knowledgeable local application to drive effectiveness. Look for a supplier that can offer a service based on proven experience in the required markets.

Established global network

You need access to an established global staffing network of highly trained and experienced field staff, all of who are ready to deliver results for you at short notice. This network needs to be backed-up with a stable infrastructure that can delivery seamlessly, in multiple markets.

The Importance of consistency

Consistent communication and execution is crucial in any campaign, so there should be one person who is solely accountable for the overall delivery of any campaign, who is supported by a regional network. The importance of consistency shouldn’t be undervalued, especially when launching a multi-region campaign and ensuring the local market challenges that will inevitably arise.

One size does not fit all

Cross-territory campaigns are much less effective when a myopic “one size fits all” solution is applied. To ensure that this doesn’t happen, cultural understanding is vital so that selection, training and engagement plans reflect the unique nature of the host market, the local nuances and of course their consumers.

People are truly the most effective way to engage people, no matter the market. Their value can’t be undervalued.

Carina Filek is Global Managing Partner of Elevate Staffing UK & US, which delivers bespoke staffing solutions and marketing activations across the UK, EU and US. Elevate works with experiential and activation agencies including Havas, LIFE, A Little Bird, IMG, 3 Monkeys Zeno, and Jack Morton. Brand clients include Oculus, Facebook, Monster, Coca-Cola, and Soap & Glory.

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London live brand engagement agency Kru Live is claiming to be the first UK agency to accept digital currencies for payment for both UK-based and international work. KruLive will now take payment in any of the top five cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Dash and Litecoin.

Tom Eatenton, CEO and Founder of Kru Live, says that he is confident in the viability of cryptocurrencies as a payment mechanism and adds that the company has been approached by clients wanting to use them. He observes: “It won’t be for every client, although if one of our clients wishes to use this method of payment then we are more than happy to accommodate them. If household names like Microsoft, Expedia and Subway can do it, why can’t we? We are willing to demonstrate this confidence and the desire of many of our global clients to find more cost-effective means of doing business across borders by offering this as a method of payment.”

Eatenton adds that Kru Live has “put in place a detailed structure and processes to make this possible as well as to manage the risk in current currency fluctuations.”

Sarah-Jane Benham, managing director of Kru Live, comments: “We are now seeing the rise in interest and investment in cryptocurrencies, so we again want to stay ahead of the game and ensure we are responding to client demand.”

Kru Live works with a global group of agencies known as The Staffing and Entertainment Collective, and claims to be seeing growing demand for international activity, with more than 20% of its business coming from outside the UK.

Founded in 2005, Kru Live is a multi-award winning global live brand engagement agency specialising in event staffing and entertainment. It works with both brands and agencies; brand clients include MasterCard, HSBC, NFL, LandRover, Birds Eye, Oculus Rift, PlayStation, Google (pictured) and Nivea.

Kru Live founded global network The Staffing & Entertainment Collective in 2014; it now covers 34 countries. Recent international activations include pan-European tours with Reebok, Footlocker, Taylor Swift, Salesforce and PlayStation.

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Blackjack Promotions, which specialises in airport staffing, travel retail and experiential marketing, has seen massive growth in demand for market research services during 2017, as clients focus on understanding how passengers use airports and their feelings about the service they receive.

In recent months, Blackjack has been awarded new contracts or had existing contracts extended with a number of airports, including Stansted, London Luton Airport and Dubai – the world’s busiest international passenger airport.

Fiona Tindall, Head of Domestic Retail at Blackjack Promotions, says: “Airports can be incredibly challenging locations to carry out face-to-face research. Travellers can be tired, distracted and stressed, while there may be restrictions on how and where staff can deliver marketing activities and what they can say to people, particularly when you’re working air-side, beyond the security barriers.”

Blackjack has a large database of experienced brand ambassadors who are security cleared to work ‘airside’, in the areas beyond the security gates and passport control.

Tindall adds: “It’s vital that brand ambassadors working within the airport environment understand how travellers think and how to approach them in a way that reduces stress levels, rather than adding to them. Staff need much higher levels of diplomacy and general customer service skills than they would need, say, in a traditional retail environment, public space or festival or event.”

At Stansted, Blackjack staff worked over the summer (the airport’s busiest period), monitoring the quality of user experience, including queue lengths, passenger traffic flow, congestion points and other issues relevant to the journey through the terminal. This is the second year running Blackjack has delivered face-to-face research services at Stansted.

At Luton, Blackjack was appointed in 2016 to provide field agents to support an airport quality survey programme. London Luton Airport (LLA) constantly monitors all aspects of the passenger experience and was also keen to understand how passengers feel about its redevelopment programme, launched in 2016. That contract has now been extended for three years.

At Dubai, Blackjack was appointed to deliver research services during 2016 to understand more about the passenger experience and how they could improve passenger satisfaction. The data delivered by this initial programme was so useful that Dubai has extended it to run until May 2018, and has also added a ‘mystery shopping’ function.

For Dubai, Blackjack had to source multilingual research staff to cover 32 passenger interaction points across four terminals, 365 days a year. Staff have to have airside access. They input questionnaire responses onto tablets and upload the data in real time for Dubai Airports to access.

Blackjack Promotions is a leading staffing solutions, travel retail and experiential specialist. A subsidiary of US company ABM Industries, a global provider of facilities management services, Blackjack is based at Heathrow, where it employs approximately 1,000 staff, in addition to its database of 8,000+ field staff. Blackjack is a member of the IPM agency.

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Staffing and experiential agency StreetPR has made a public commitment to staff quality by announcing the launch of a new team dedicated to closely monitoring the behaviour and performance of its brand ambassadors. This will be on top of carrying out its usual checks on ongoing campaigns.

StreetPR founder James Rix (pictured) says that representing the face of a brand and being its key point of direct consumer contact means it is vital for brand ambassadors to perform consistently well. Just one underperforming member of staff can not only undermine the effectiveness of a campaign, but also damage the reputation of the brand or product they are representing, he argues. To reassure potential clients of the high quality of its staff, StreetPR has pledged to invest 2% of its annual revenue on the close monitoring of its brand ambassadors.

“The quality of staff in experiential campaigns is more critical to client success than arguably in any other marketing discipline,” says Rix. “We wanted to publicly acknowledge this to show the important role we play for brands in directly engaging with the people who matter most, and to prove our commitment to consistently high standards by revealing that we are dedicating a significant proportion of our turnover to monitoring and measurement.”

StreetPR’s new team will constantly check on promotional staff performance and campaign effectiveness through both visible and ‘mystery shopper’ techniques to ensure its well-trained brand ambassadors stay on top of their game.

Launched by entrepreneur James Rix in 2012, StreetPR is the biggest individual supplier of staff to London’s competitive nightlife industry and in recent years has expanded to supply promotional staff and brand ambassadors to gyms, hotels, restaurants, event and festival organisers, retailers, sports and event stadia, the public sector, FMCG brands, telecoms and tech companies. More recently, it has won significant business from online services providers including Deliveroo, Gousto, Hello Fresh and Hassle.

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