Honoring the best marketing campaigns

As we all know, plastics is a huge industry. In fact, it's the third-largest manufacturing industry in the U.S with (roughly) half a trillion dollars in total shipments annually these days.

There are lots of hardworking sales teams out there making sure their companies get their share of that pie, too. But there are also some amazing marketing teams working alongside these sales professionals. These marketers are creating trade show displays, finding prospective customer lists, developing logos, shooting video, writing copy, purchasing advertising, deploying emails, writing news releases, creating customer “journeys,” making sales brochures, funneling leads to the proper sales team member and a hundred other things.

Sales people are on the front line, facing the customer and asking for the sale. Behind the scenes, marketers are arming their sales forces with the proper tools. What's more, these marketers are creating the campaigns that introduce a new product to the marketplace or work to retain the current customers, reminding them why they bought from your sales team in the first place.

Often, the reward for a sales person comes in their commission checks. For the marketer, the reward is more intrinsic. Today, we aim to change that.

On May 2, Plastics News will honor the best of the best in marketing with our first Campaign of the Year awards. These honors will be bestowed at the second annual Plastics News Marketing Summit at the Westin Chicago Northwest.

(Publishers' note: If you missed last year's Marketing Summit, you missed the first gathering of plastics industry marketing execs. Now, shame on you. But don't miss this year's event. We've assembled a great speaker lineup that include David Ladd from International Automotive Components Group, Bill Allen from Covestro and a panel discussion on marketing for The Big Trade Show. More details are here: www.plasticsnews.com/marketing summit.)

Now, back to the Campaign of the Year awards. We plan to honor the best 2016 marketing/advertising campaigns in the following categories:

• Processors.

• Resin and compounding companies.

• Machinery companies.

• Other (service, associations, financial, etc.).

Self-nominations for the award are encouraged. The rules are simple and are online at www.plasticsnews.com/campaignaward. Some criteria you can submit include the motivation for the campaign, its duration, description of activities, creative elements, the complexity of the campaign, the results of the campaign and the metrics used to measure success (e.g. revenue generated, new business earned, customers retained, etc.).

Deadline for entry is March 31.

We've assembled a group of seven judges along with three members of the Plastics News staff to review the nominations. Five of the judges run top ad agencies in the plastics industry, and they are joined by two chief marketing officers from plastics equipment firms. The list of judges is online. Naturally, no judge will be involved in the consideration of a company they represent.

In addition, since the room at the Plastics News Marketing Summit will be full of marketers, we plan to award a “People's Choice” award from the entries submitted for Campaign of the Year. This, of course, may differ from that of the judges or it could duplicate their choice.

Come to Chicago and see for yourself. It's marketers' time to shine.

Lafferty is publisher of Plastics News. Follow him on Twitter @brennanlafferty.