Effie Awards 2014 to Shine a Light on the Region’s Most Effective Campaigns
Leading marketing effectiveness awards program to honor the campaigns that have yielded the best results
This year’s Effie MENA awards will be shining a light on the most brilliant players in the MENA region’s marketing and advertising landscape, with the scheme having successfully cemented itself as the leading industry awards program. Now in its sixth edition, the Effie MENA awards has become the benchmark for acknowledging the ‘ideas that work’ and the concepts that have had the most measurable impact both in this part of the world and further afield.
The Effie MENA 2014 program takes place at Saddling Paddock, The Meydan Hotel in Dubai, with this year’s edition having been expanded to a total of 23 classes of achievement; including Best Youth Marketing Campaign, Best Use of Social Media and Most Effective Agency Network of the Year. The full spectrum of categories has been designed to allow organizations, brands and other stakeholders the opportunity to showcase their talents in their respective discipline, with the judges deliberating on the campaigns that have yielded the most tangible results.
“This year, the Effie Awards is the largest event to date, it features even more categories for entry. The global marketing sector has undergone radical change in recent years, with new campaigns and initiatives moving away from billboards and broadcasts and instead, shifting into the emergent digital realm,” says Alexandre Hawari, Co-CEO of Mediaquest, the media organization behind the event. “We have planned the forthcoming Effies as a recognition of this new reality and a celebration of the very best marketing talent by honoring those campaigns that have had a quantifiable effect, with many of the winners making use of new media platforms.”
Launched in New York in 1968, the Effies were created to honor marketing ideas that achieved the best results, with the program rapidly establishing a reputation as being the most prestigious of all professional marketing awards. The Effies today celebrate the Global Effie, Effie MENA, Euro Effie, Effie Asia Pacific and the North American Effies.
One of the most recent inclusions into the Effies is the Effie Effectiveness Index, a scheme that ranks marketing communications’ most effective players, whether agencies, advertisers or brands. Introduced in 2011, the system uses the data from 40 worldwide Effie Award competitions to determine those in the industry that have had the most measurable success. Only Effie finalists and winners that have met the organization’s internationally approved judging criteria are eligible for inclusion in the Index, making the Effies a point of reference for credible and verifiable achievement in the marketing sphere.
The Effie Effectiveness Index identifies and ranks the marketing communications industry’s most effective agencies, advertisers and brands by analyzing finalist and winner data from 40 worldwide Effie Award competitions.
Originally launched in June 2011, the Effie Index can be used to reveal the most effective agencies, advertisers and brands globally, regionally, in specific countries, or even in different product categories.
The Effie MENA Awards became part of the Effie program in 2009 when it joined with the GMR Effectiveness in Marketing Awards – the GEMAS – the former touchstone measure of regional marketing brilliance. Organizers say that the continued growth of the Effies scheme is an indication of the strength of the global marketing industry and its capacity to lead communications.
“Corresponding with the rise in the number of categories for the Effies MENA 2014, we have seen an increase in the number of entrants, with submissions for the forthcoming edition 75 percent higher than last year,” says Hawari. “This is a sign of the continued strength of the regional marketing industry, which constantly seeks innovative and captivating initiatives to effectively reach out to and engage with the consumer.”
About the Effies
The Effie Awards were founded in 1968 by the American Marketing Association’s New York division to honour those marketing organisations, initiatives and campaigns that have achieved success through clearly measurable and quantifiable results; developing into a world-leading benchmark for advertising prowess. In 2009, the GMR Effectiveness in the Marketing Awards (GEMAS) joined forces with the now well-established Effies to become the GEMAS Effie Mena Awards. The partnership has brought a broader international dimension to the GEMAS and to marketing in the Middle East, in addition to launching the Effies in one of the most dynamic, emerging markets in the world.
