Dubai: The Middle East Public Relations Association (Mepra) Awards 2010 are just around the corner and the deadline for those in the public relations field to enter their submissions is October 14.
This will be the second year for the awards.
Mepra Executive Director Rebecca Hill said: "It's really to showcase the best practices.
"It's also to showcase that the people in PR understand the fundamentals that are important to the profession," she said.
"It's communications management, corporate communications, consumer relations, and integrated marketing." This year the awards include 10 Best Practice categories, in addition to two team awards and two individual awards.
Founded in 2001, Mepra made changes in 2009 to allow not only agencies, but individual professionals as well, to become members of the association.
Submissions made by a PR professional or a PR agency can't be longer than 1,000 words, representing a specific campaign. They must articulate all of the details from strategy to implementation and eventually results, Hill said.
Supporting documents such as a press kit or a research document can also be part of a submission.
Hill said that the submissions criteria was an attempt to move away from what is called "advertising value equivalence". "People want to see the clippings and that has no relevance whatsoever to the value of communication, so practitioners need to be smarter at how they define their campaign," she said.
Campaign
"So if the agency is running a campaign to get people to quit smoking, we want to know how many people have actually stopped as a result of the campaign," she explained. In the run-up to the Mepra Awards 2010, the association is holding a briefing session on Monday to help agencies better understand the judging process and to give feedback on submissions for the Mepra Awards 2009.
A panel of 20 national and international judges would judge the work by early November, and the winners would be announced on December 1, she said.
Tim Harrison, chair of the judges panel, said: "In a nutshell, we look for a communications activity that assists or delivers a business objective".
"That might be anything from a company wanting to sell more of its goods or it might be an organisation wanting to deliver a particular message to a particular group of people," Harrison said.
Based on the evaluation of last year's submissions, Harrison said that the quality of the work had been of a very high standard. "The winners from 2009 could have won awards anywhere in the world," he said. This year Mepra was hopeful of a good spread across the region and more submissions for the awards.
More entries
"I think because last year was a first year I assume this year we'll see more entries," Hill said. "Last year, we had submissions from Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and of course the UAE."
For the PR agencies that win, it's a great motivation booster. "An award is recognition by industry peers of excellent work and capability and that's a very good credential for any agency or any in house team," Harrison said.
Ketchum Raad Middle East PR agency is one of the agencies that won last year's "Best Practice Award in Consumer Relations". Speaking about last year's win, Ketchum Raad Managing Director Hania Tabet said that "doing well at the awards endorses the often misunderstood practice of PR and reinforces our position as an agency of creative thinkers that can apply our expertise across a wide cross-section of industries".
Tabet said at a time that advertising awards were already well established in the Gulf, it's time for good PR practice in the Middle East to also get some recognition.
Camilla D'abo, Managing Director at d'pr, another agency that won a Mepra award last year, said: "Awards allow the industry to really put themselves forward and have something to work toward and to achieve quality practice."
D'pr had set up a full PR department just three years before the agency won the Mepra award for best creative practice.
"Internally, it's huge and we strongly advocate it," she said.
"Also for the companies that are new to the market, it's a way to prove that they can achieve new things," D'Abo said. "From a recognition point of view, it allowed us to be recognised by other potential clients."
