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Your brand has significantly less marketing dollars to invest versus the competition. What's your strategy to level the playing field and stand out in the category despite being outspent? Case writers: Tell us what your budget/resource challenges were and how you overcame them. Indicate who the top brands are in your category, and include context on your annual marketing spend relative to the competition (your spend as a percentage of their ballpark spend range).

Consumer affinity for brands is increasingly tied to social justice issues, and advancing and embodying diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) has gone from internal practices to public-facing programs, support and action. What’s the strategy for ensuring your brand is seen as a leader in this space by addressing inequity and championing equality?

New tech capabilities (and the inherent brand possibilities that AI and the metaverse unlock) unfold daily. The challenge is to discern which opportunities hold strategic advantages and impact value for the brand. So what's the strategy for utilizing tech’s potential effectively?

As more consumers become more focused on doing their part for the planet, brands are responding with environmental-friendly practices, from sourcing and manufacturing to packaging and recycling/reuse. What’s the strategy to articulate and differentiate your brand’s sustainability efforts, and create a meaningful connection for consumers so that they understand how they are a part of the journey?

Reaching and influencing customers in the B2B space presents unique competitive challenges. What strategy informed your brand's approach to gain attention and successfully build B2B relationships?

Finding ways for brands to resonate across the decision-making journey is challenging within strict regulatory environments. The opportunity to connect with target audiences in categories like pharma or cannabis calls for insightful regulatory navigation strategies. Explain how your strategic approach opened the door to creativity within constraints, and helped position your brand to stand out in a regulated category.

Strategies for changing minds and saving lives; spanning Government, advocacy, social issues, funds and awareness-raising. What’s your strategy to stand out and differentiate your cause in the very competitive non-profit space? What insights inspired your strategy?

As a challenger brand, you have growth and market impact goals that require strategic positioning and segmentation to differentiate from the leading brands. You’re not the market leader, so what's your strategy to take on and rival the top brands in your category? Case writers: Tell us what your challenges were and how you overcame the market advantages of the top players in your category with a compelling brand narrative strategy. Indicate who the top brands are in your category, and include context on your annual marketing spend relative to the competition (your spend as a percentage of their ballpark spend range).

There are more touch points, but engagement is getting harder, so strategic insights need to inform plans in order to create compelling and impactful ways to reach consumers. How did your connection strategy go beyond reach and opportunity, to engage and influence your audience? Case writers: Explain how your 360 planning influenced the creative experience and/or elevated the context of the message.

Crafting unique, relevant, sticky brand content that engages consumers is one thing, keeping it up is the bigger challenge. What's the strategy to build audiences and develop content programs and platforms in a long-term, sustainable way?

Great planning leads to great work. This award allows teams to recognize the planners on your team who provided the spark that led to brilliant creative and big brand ideas. Case writers: Please include an explanation of how your CSO’s insights opened a creative door for the brand.

The value of data (and a direct relationship with consumers) is a key brand priority. There are more ways and means to gather and deploy deeper data, but changing consumer behaviour and privacy concerns make it more challenging, so what's the plan for capturing and utilizing intel effectively?

Your brand has a formula that works and has been following it for years. While it may be tempting to ditch the old for something completely new, the bigger challenge (and opportunity) is to build on the platform you’ve invested in. So what's the plan for amping up the interest and evolving the existing brand narrative parameters – without losing the brand equity you’ve already built? Case writers: Tell us what your evolution strategy is. What was the brand doing before and how long was that brand platform in place? How has it evolved, and what insights informed the refresh?

Like it sounds. A transformational disruption strategy.

From the ground up, a blueprint for going to market. From brand new products and services to line extensions and innovation, the segmentation, positioning and marketing strategy behind the launch plan.

As Canada grows ever more multicultural, brands need to evolve their strategy to be more inclusive. Case writers: Explain how you leveraged cultural insights to develop a strategy that uniquely and effectively positions and connects your brand with multicultural consumers.

It's hard enough to reach a mass audience, how do you find a strategy to culturally connect with specific communities? Case writers: Explain how your demo/market insights and targeting strategies effectively reached your niche audience.

To ferret out new insights you need to look at things differently. From analytic gymnastics to guerilla anthropology, what novel research methodology fueled your planning process?

Optimizing spend and amping results is a core strategic focus. This award recognizes ROI-savvy strategic planning that leads to more efficient marcom outcomes. Case writers: Explain how your strategy drove effectiveness against a primary goal, and prove the impact by showing a direct link between the strategy and the return. Must include an ROI or ROAS calculation; judges will expect to see a return on ad spend figure (the amount of revenue generated per $ spent).

Trust, earned media, a conduit to hard-to-engage audiences - no wonder brands want to tap the social power of sharing and influence. What's the strategy for doing so in an effective way?

It was broke. You fixed it! Time moved on so you found a whole new reason for being - a new positioning, a new channel, new targets or a new way to go to market. Case writers: Please give context on the turnaround; what problems did the brand face, what was the turnaround strategy, what insights informed the plan, and how did it work.