Gold Quill Awards: Judging
Excellence in communication
by Toby Ward, Prescient Digital Media, British Columbia, Canada
Excellence in communication requires careful, intelligent planning; superb execution in the presence of multiple, often indelible challenges; and a knack for soaring above the atmosphere of reasonable expectations.
The breadth, depth and innovation exemplified in the 2009 Gold Quill Awards competition surprised and humbled me—there was a quantity of immensely talented communicators creating remarkable plans with highly inventive techniques and media.
I judged more than 20 entries from all over the world; submissions that represent the best-of-the-best in the “electronic and digital communication” categories. Despite being a past Gold Quill Award winner, it was very humbling indeed to see so many organizations delivering such notable plans, creative media and tremendous results.
Sun Life – Philippines is a sterling example of golden communication talent and tactics at work producing a winning chronicle. Faced with a rapidly eroding market share for life insurance in the Philippines (a 35-percent decrease in market penetration in three years), the Sun Life marketing team lead by Aaron B. Peji developed a highly innovative and tactically diverse marketing communication campaign that employed a surprisingly deep mixture of offline and online media.
With impressive, well-thought and meticulous plans and built-in measures (supported by detailed research initiated prior to designing the campaign) Peji et al developed an engaging online quiz intended to identify the financial needs of individual Pilipinos of the target audience while delivering new sales for Sun Life. The quiz, called the Financial Explorer’s Quiz (FEQ), asked five simple questions of prospective buyers and delivered key information for both the participants and Sun Life sales team:
- Ideal life insurance coverage or retirement fund requirement of the user,
- Ideal insurance product to cover the above identified need, and
- Monthly and annual premiums for the suggested product to meet the identified need.
In order to encourage the completion of these quizzes, which were then used by the sales teams to secure new sales for the company, the marketing team designed an elaborate campaign combining offline and online media that delivered exceptional value for the employed budget of only US$120,000. The entire campaign adopted an adventure theme replete with an imposing and adventurous booth used in high-traffic malls frequented by the target audience. The booth took the shape of a sailing ship where potential customers were encouraged to ‘board’ and complete a raffle contest and the FEQ. “Explorers” were encouraged to complete a form that resembles an adventurer’s favorite tool: a compass (symbolic by showing the direction people must “follow in order to achieve their true north in terms of their finances”).
Combined with other tactics including an engaging web site, Friendster site (social media site), regional press conferences and some 2,000 cars “roaming the metro” bearing the campaign logo, the campaign delivered a lot of “buzz” and fantastic results:
- 21,500 people completed the survey (14,500 through the website)
- The web site received more than 137,000 hits during the one month last year
- 260,000 reader impressions through media (newspapers)
- 589 new policies were underwritten representing more than $10 million in coverage, and nearly $500,000 in annual premium revenue
- The old consumer financial calculator is no longer being used and instead Sun Life has adopted the FEQ as the new benchmark for computer-based selling and serves as a platform for the development of other interactive and digital sales tools
Sun Life – Philippines has proven that intelligent and engaging use of multiple communication and marketing channels can deliver spectacular wins with only limited resources (even in a rapidly eroding market). Moreover, because of the Gold Quill Awards program, not only have exceptionally talented communicators been recognized for their superlative skills, but communicators from all over the world have the opportunity to learn from Sun Life’s success and employ those learnings in their work to produce wins of their own.
Start preparing your Gold Quill Award entry today! The early-bird deadline is 27 January 2010, and the final deadline is 3 February 2010.
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