Categories

Ideas & collaboration resulting in stand-out programs are key SIA Awards criteria. 

The main areas of entry are:

Activation - Innovative use of immersive experience to spur consumer action.

Shopper marketing programs - Forward-thinking programs that influence shoppers in new ways along the path to purchase.

Retail innovation - Efforts that engage shoppers in-store and beyond.

Creative commerce - Innovative commerce programs (digital and offline) that enhance consumer brand experience and perception.

For more details on the elements judges will be assessing in each category, please see the Material Requirements page. 

Categories

360 Integration

Campaigns that engaged shoppers equally well across mass media right down to social media and customized content purpose-built for whatever device they're toting. This encompasses brands developing true transmedia content that creatively uses each channel to its utmost potential.

Acting on insights

So many consumer trends, so little shelf space. Which insights led to a successful new market opportunity or go-to-market strategy? Tell us how you built a program/activation leveraging insights.

Awareness & trial breakthrough 

Programs that cleverly broke through consumers' auto-pilot shopping mode by leveraging shopper insights to successfully drive awareness and trial for existing products. 

Brand new!

New approaches for newly launched products - your go-to-market blueprint, from positioning to building trial, shelf presence and promotion.

Changing behaviour

Activations and shopper marketing that changes consumers' routines and patterns. Programs that disrupt category conventions to re-energize and refocus consumer intent and action.

CRM & loyalty

Customer relationship management innovation, including loyalty program advances, new partnerships, new data segmentation techniques and implementation, strategic social media community-building, customized communications and effective use of technology to drive repeat business and increase spend.

CSR

From supporting charities and causes to your own social and sustainability initiatives, moving the industry forward entails doing a better job as corporate citizens. This category recognizes the most impactful social responsibility and cause-related programs from retailers and brands. NOTE: This category should be entered by commercial for-profit brands only.

Data

It's a marketer's best friend, but the relationship is a tricky one. How are you successfully melding market intel, research, CRM-gleaned info to boost success? Tell us what your goal was, how you tackled it using data, and the impact on your brand's growth.

Experiential

From events and tours, to stunts and pop-ups the most clever use of environment to create an immersive brand experience and engage consumers via effective activations.  

In-store engagement

Novel approaches that garner shopper attention and interaction at retail. This category recognizes the clever use of environment and activations to influence shopper activity.

Omnichannel experience

Evolution of a brand's ecomm experience to seamlessly connect touchpoints between a brand's online & offline presence. This category recognizes programs that build brand presence and impact consumer behaviour.

Original idea

This category recognizes the ideas that show the way forward. When you go beyond conventional thinking, with insights and programs that defy categorization, this is the award that recognizes those shopper "Eurekas" - from brilliant insight to execution.

Out of the box retail

Driving retail engagement through innovation - from new store formats to brand content programs. The best new initiatives, such as retail transformation, apps, ongoing brand content efforts and social media community-building.

Overcoming challenge

Innovative solutions for overcoming adversity and turning challenges into opportunities. Spans shared concerns such as responding to market disruption or navigating highly-regulated categories, to overcoming brand-specific issues.

Packaging

Beyond a pretty logo, breakthroughs across the product packaging front. New products, sustainable packaging or redesigns that stand out from the crowd. This category is for permanent products, not for promotional items.

Partnering

To do something truly novel in the shopper and activation space requires partners to step outside their comfort zone. This category recognizes the partnerships that went beyond the status quo to create new consumer experiences: partnerships amongst brands, clever media partnerships and innovative retail collaboration. 

Path to purchase

From mobile campaigns to innovative sampling programs and OOH, this category recognizes the efforts that used new strategies and tactics to drive loyalty, awareness, sales and trial for brands by creating strong purchase motivation.

PR

Programs - rooted in earned - designed to drive business and influence action, spanning social engagement, influencers, community management, events and stunts.

Program Design

Activations, campaigns and retail programs need to work harder to earn attention. How did your design-thinking approach craft a program that stood out and made an impact?

Reinvention 

Brands or retailers that navigated a transformation to their positioning, offering or long-running programs to change perceptions, reach a new demographic or re-engage consumers, as well as re-imagined global initiatives tailored to our unique retail environment. 

ROI

How effective was your program? The ultimate goal is to prove your investment drove volume and/or outperformed KPI goals. Include year over year results and category performance context. 

Seasonal & event success

Breaking through the Super Bowl snack tsunami and Christmas shopping frenzy takes some ingenuity. The best one-off and themed marketing programs that broke through holiday and big event clutter. 

Small budget, big impact

Programs that moved the needle but didn't break the bank, via inventive budget-stretching ideas. For budgets under $150K (total spend). 

Sponsorship

Beer, sports, music. How have you leveraged sponsorship investments via activations and shopper programs to stand out and achieve goals?

Targeting

Clever connection with segmented and niche demos. This category recognizes excellence in effective targeting, including multicultural programs, behavioural and psychographic audience engagement, and savvy addressability solutions.

Tech savvy

Tech-centric innovation that helps brands breakthrough to effectively reach & engage consumers. This category identifies the best use of tools such as AI, AR and VR, that made a real difference in developing successful brand activations and shopper programs.