Montreal Gazette leads the pack of seven Canadian winners at the International Newsmedia Marketing Awards (INMA) 2009 competition that were announced Friday at the 79th INMA World Congress in Miami, which represents the world’s best newspaper marketing campaigns from the past year.
Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, INMA is a non-profit member organization dedicated to recognizing and extending marketing activities of newspapers. Most of the major Canadian media companies are members.
Winning the coveted Best of Show award was the Gazette in Montreal for its single-copy marketing campaign titled ‘Elections,’ developed by Bleublancrouge. The multimedia entry was part of the Gazette‘s ongoing ‘Words Matter’ marketing campaign, which used elections as the subject matter of TV and radio commercials that asked people if they needed help to sort out issues. Print ads used innovative styles to communicate words spoken by notables such as Martin Luther King, Barack Obama and the five Canadian party leaders. The campaign is credited for helping increase single-copy sales in late 2008. Second and third place for Best of Show went to Dagens Nyheter in Stockholm, Sweden, and the New York Times, respectively.
The Globe and Mail‘s trade marketing ‘Hands’ campaign also received a gold award for the Best Campaign for Readership/Usage of the Print Newspaper with circulation over 300,000. Developed by the Globe’s creative agency BLACK, the campaign is a series of black and white photographs featuring real Globe and Mail newspaper, magazine and digital advertising clients as well as members of the Globe‘s editorial team and advertising sales staff.
The Toronto Star took the third spot in the same category for an Earth Hour special, for which it published how-to guides for greening households leading up to Earth Hour 2008.
The Winnipeg Free Press took home two golds – one in the Public Relations and Community Service category for publishing an issue on pink paper on the day the World Conference on Breast Cancer was held in the city. The other first place was won in the Online Audience Usage and Engagement category (circ. between 75,000 and 300,000) for their ‘Greatest Manitoban’ contest. Ontario’s St. Catharines Standard also took gold in the same online category but for circ. under 75,000 for ‘The TalkSpot,’ a popular photo and video submissions site.
The Toronto Sun took third place in the New Marketing Services category for a special section with the Toronto Automobile Dealers Association. The Waterloo Region Record also took third place in the Print Subscription Sales category for a special Home Makeover Event.
The 73-year-old INMA Awards 2009 competition generated 531 entries from nearly 157 newspapers in 43 different countries. Judging was conducted via the Internet by 21 judges worldwide. Judges included executives in the media, advertising, marketing and research industries.
