We were at the Marketing Society annual dinner last night, where they announced their ‘brand of the year’ award.
Brands were nominated by anybody, long-listed by a panel of experts, and then online voting decided the shortlist. The final award was decided by an audience vote (by ARS) on the night. Brands on the long-list included Facebook, Twitter and Apple.
Our big news is that giffgaff made the top 5! Seriously, a brand we launched in beta just under a year ago, and that publicly declares ‘we don’t do big glossy ad campaigns’ was a top 5 contender for the Marketing Society’s brand of the year.
On the night we were up against British Gas, Aviva, Innocent and John Lewis. In a room full of 1000 senior and mostly traditional marketers, many of whom had never heard of giffgaff until that night, we never stood a chance. (We considered stealing handsets from other tables to cheat the vote. They would have gone well with our smuggled-in bottles of Cuervo.)
John Lewis took the prize. We’re glad – they’re a genuinely different and interesting business. It would be a pity if Aviva or British Gas won just for spending a lot of money on advertising. (* See note below.)
But we’re incredibly proud that giffgaff got that far, and had that platform to get in front of that audience, who we’re sure will now sit up and take notice.
And this on the same day giffgaff won a Forrester Groundswell award.
* Update: We made this comment about Aviva back when they seemed mainly to be to be doing very consistent yellow advertising that was unmissable but, you know, not unmissable. However since they’ve made this TV spot featuring Paul Whitehouse as (spoiler alert) a dead dad, which is really quite brave, so we might have to take our words back.