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November 20, 2003 CONTENTS Has someone forwarded this newsletter to you? Sign up for your own free subscription at our web site, http://www.technologymarketing.com. 15 MINUTES WITH Michael Gallagher of the American Business Awards By Scott Van Camp The Second Annual American Business Awards, nicknamed The Stevies (for the Greek word "crowned) is now accepting nominations on their Web site, www.stevieawards.com/aba. Michael Gallagher, president of The Stevies Awards, took the long held idea of staging a national program honoring great performances in the workplace and led it to fruition last April. Companies like Advanta, Alcoa, Domino's Pizza, HP and IBM were among those honored with first-year Stevies. We spoke with Gallagher about round two of the awards, to be presented in New York City in April 2004. Technology Marketing: How did you get the idea for the American Business Awards? Michael Gallagher: I had the idea about 10 years ago, and just wasn't in a position to do it then. If you work in the media -- and I include advertising in that mix -- long enough, sooner or later you're going to win an award. There are a ton of advertising and communications awards. When I left that field, it struck me how few opportunities there were for people in other industries to get prominent recognition for their work. I didn't have any illusions that the awards were going to be completely novel. Every industry has awards sponsored by trade magazines and associations, but the difference was that the America Business Awards was going to be all encompassing. Last year, when the New York Post called it "the business world's own Oscars," it really struck a chord. So how did you organize the first awards? First, we were fortunate, I think, to start the awards in the right year. People told me it wasn't the right year, but I believed it was, because the message was right: Despite the headlines being dominated by the alleged misdeeds of a handful of people at a handful of companies, there are millions of people doing good things, and why not celebrate that? I left my job in the dot-com world in 2001 and began to contact a lot of people for support. I was able to get Hoover's, Forbes, Inc. and Wired magazines, among others, on board. I also worked with an executive search firm to put together an advisory board. We mailed out invitations to a lot of high-level people, some of whom said, "I'll support this, but I just don't have the time to be involved." And some people, like Donald Trump, got on board with this because he felt the message was exactly right. It's difficult to launch a new awards program because you don't have a track record. The first question that potential entrants ask is, "Who won last year?" But we had close to 500 nominations, most were from medium to large companies, and most of the winners were household names. And many of the winners were technology companies. The majority were tech companies, like Oracle, IBM and Ultimate Software. I think it's because tech companies tend to be more progressive, and they're more exposed to awards. And how are the entries going for 2004? We have about twice the number of entries than we had at the same time last year. I've noticed that more Fortune 100 companies have entered. They were the ones that decided to sit it out for the first year. Typically, awards entries tend to double in size for two or three years, and then they settle into a 25 percent increase per year. Awards are kind of like Starbucks. When the first Starbucks opened down the street, you thought, "Who would drink a two-dollar cup of coffee?" But when you drink it, you say, "We've been drinking dish water all these years. We just didn't know it." Awards are similar, in that until you get involved in it, you don't really see the benefits. What does it take to win an American Business Award? If you read some of the nominations that eventually won last year, they were from companies that didn't change the world. They performed well and they told their story well. In some cases companies won awards because they held their own where all their competitors were really getting drubbed. On our Web site, we created a page to explain how to prepare nominations, looking back at the common denominators among last year's winners. You didn't have to accomplish extraordinary things to win a Stevie, because the judges gave high scores to entries that were well written and told a good story. Do you think that companies who've had some controversy or a bad year shy away from entering these awards? Some of the nominations received this year are from companies that have really been beaten down. We don't release the names of entries, but one of them is a tech company that's gone through the ringer for a couple of years. But they've recently had a good quarter, and I know they've entered because they have something to trumpet. I didn't want this to be a program for companies free of any sort of notoriety. There are tens of thousand of employees at these companies, and somebody is doing a good job. Why shouldn't they get some recognition? For the looks of the Web site, you've made the whole process pretty easy for both entrants and the judges. Having come from the dot-com world, I knew there was an opportunity to automate a lot of the process. Much of the groundwork last year was designing and developing the systems. We encourage entrants to submit through the site, because in most categories, they're simply entering text, and they can pay the entry fee online as well. Who does the judging? Anyone can apply to be a judge. There's an open application on the site. Based on your experience, we either accept or reject you. If you're a vp of sales, you'd judge the sales categories. Judging is done two stages. The first stage whittles entries down to the finalists. The final judges are our advisory board members, who look at the finalists and choose the winners. What's next for the ABAs? We rolled out the International Business Awards this past summer. That was our second program, and we're still getting entries in for that. In terms of direct marketing, there's a whole set of challenges in getting the word out; international direct mail lists just aren't as good as American lists. The Financial Times, and publications in Mexico and other countries are media sponsors. We have an advisory board that includes business people from around the world. Those awards will be launched in March. And, we're about to launch the first small-business Stevies. Knowing how other programs are organized, it was my goal from the beginning to adapt to the Emmy model. You have one trophy, but you have multiple competitions -- primetime, daytime, sports, etc. The ABA is the flagship, but it will make sense for us to roll out other versions as sponsorships pop up. What kind of a return can companies get from being a part of this? In the '90s, branding was about looking for the big score. Today, branding is not so much about being notorious, it's getting recognition for your bona fides. Awards are one of the tools that marketers have to do that. It's about getting objective judges to read your story and to say your company has done a pretty good job, and getting some acclaim for that. If you talk to some of the tech companies about what winning an award meant for them last year, I think they'd say they received a lot of good press from it. Scott Van Camp can be reached at svancamp@technologymarketing.com. |