By: Suzanne Buzek
Ah, one of my favorite things about AMA Cincinnati: awards and recognition. On behalf of the AMA Cincinnati board of directors, I’m happy to share that we are now accepting nominations for the 2017 Pinnacle Awards.
Whether you’ve celebrated Cincinnati’s marketing greats with us for a few years, are sitting pretty with some glass on your company’s recognition shelf, are planning a Rocky-esque comeback, or have never submitted for a Pinnacle Award before, here’s what you need to know:
Why bother?
As a place where floating soap, beer, and pork products have interesting backstories, Cincinnati is a town of “doers.” Cincinnati is a marketing town, a research town, a branding town, a creative town, an inventive town, a startup town.
Whatever adjective you may identify with in the above paragraph, if you work in marketing in Cincinnati, chances are, you’ve worked hard and have some stories to tell. The AMA Pinnacle Awards is where you can share those stories.
Who’s it for?
Any marketing professional in Cincinnati. You do not have to be an AMA member to nominate or submit work or attend the celebration in June (however you can join AMA any time, but that’s a different conversation).
How does it work?
Here’s the timeline:
- Now through March 10: Nomination Period
This is your “Hey, no-pressure!” time. The easy part. With just a few minutes of perusing the categories, some thought and filling out this form, you can nominate one or multiple marketing projects in one or multiple categories. A couple notes:
- All projects must have occurred in 2016 or have an “end” date by February 28, 2017.
- Even though this is a “no-pressure” period, we heavily encourage you to take a few minutes and nominate. Why? It helps us gauge interest in certain categories. It tells us if we need to be more descriptive in category descriptions or even add categories for the submission period. It can’t hurt!
- March 11-April 21: Submission Period
Organize your metrics, your images, your creative brief(s) and proof documents. Write that “abstract” to hook the judges on why your work deserves to win. We cannot stress the importance of providing results and proofs for great marketing work! Need help getting started? This guide is helpful for getting ducks in a row for an award submission.Details and instructions on how to turn in your final submissions and payments will be released in early March. - April 23: Judging Period
AMA Cleveland has been so kind to lend a hand in judging, and offer a nice objective “distance” in judging Cincinnati marketing work. They will take great care in scoring submissions in consideration of best-practice guidelines. We’ll leave them be to do what they do best. Those of us in Cincinnati wait. - June 8: The Big Night
Save the date and put your “I’m a Superstar” outfit on deck. Awards Ceremony venue and details will be announced in April.
Anything else?
That’s about everything you need to know at this time. If you want, you can check out past winners or read about them in our Blog archive. We look forward to seeing your nominations come in, and are happy to answer any questions you have at @AMACincinnati.
