DM industry defies its crisis at the DMA Royal Mail Awards 2002

This year’s Award winners clearly demonstrated that bold creative ideas, combined with a well thought out strategy, are on the increase - a trend that is vitally important to ensure the quality and effectiveness of direct marketing continues.

The work also demonstrated that direct marketers still have the ability to capture the imagination and interest of consumers by successfully combining the use of traditional direct marketing activities with new routes to market, despite today’s cluttered marketing environment and a more cynical consumer audience.

In recognition of the high quality of work produced this year, 30 Gold Awards were awarded out of a possible 32. However, it was Craik Jones Watson Mitchell Voelkel that took home the industry’s most coveted Award, the DMA Royal Mail Grand Prix Award, for their work for the ATOC (Association of Train Operating Companies).

Tasked with increasing sales of the Young Person’s Railcard (YPRC) and growing the database, Craik Jones ignored the easy and obvious option of writing about exciting places to visit. Instead, they proved their ability to burrow into youth psyche and the embarrassment of being seen as a stick-in-the-mud, with the message ‘Don’t be a local’, successfully applying it across an integrated, multi-media campaign. For this they also won Gold in the travel/leisure and multiple media categories, and a Bronze in outdoor/ambient media.

Although judges praised the work of other strong contenders such as Harrison Troughton Wunderman for their work on M&G Investments, and Proximity London for Volkswagen Polo, it was an almost unanimous decision by the Grand Prix Judging panel that the ATOC work provided an exemplary role model and set a strong benchmark for the industry to follow.

Lin McCarthy, Chair of Judges, said: “The record number and quality of entries submitted this year shows that DMA Royal Mail Awards programme is continuing to mature and grow in stature. Craik Jones’ work and other Gold winners were able to demonstrate how success can be achieved if you apply dm more intelligently and have a bit of courage to try new ideas and new mediums.”

Adam Novak, Managing Director Royal Mail Media Markets said: “The DMA Royal Mail Awards are the only awards that recognise and reward excellence in direct marketing across all sectors and play a pivotal role in ensuring the dm industry continually raise standards. Quality inspires client confidence in the mail medium, which is a key reason that mail has bucked the trend during the current recession in advertising, enjoying 9% growth.”

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