with Sabrina Duchow
Director Creative Media & Awards
Sabrina Duchow is the director of Creative Media and Awards at Mediaplus Germany, and we sat down with her recently to find out more about how media awards work and their importance within the industry.
“Innovation is like a heartbeat – like an engine that keeps everything running and pushes both us and our client in the right direction. Innovation breaks boundaries, pushes learned patterns and can challenge the status quo. Only those who are agile can quickly adapt to market-specific changes. And by fostering new ways of thinking, innovation encourages us to imagine the unimaginable, then make it a reality.”
But why are media awards so important? The simple answer is that awards set you apart from the rest. They serve as a rubber stamp of approval that tells clients, employees, and other companies that you know what you are doing, and that you carry out that work to a higher standard than any competitor. Innovation, creativity, and awards give us, and our clients, more visibility and set us apart in the industry together. The recognition from expert juries shows that we play a significant role in setting industry standards and creating market innovations. For auditors and brands looking for new agency partners, leading the rankings is a meaningful innovation driver for their own projects and brand management. In addition, award wins serve as a source of huge motivation for everyone to think innovatively and out of the box on a daily basis. Everyone who receives an award on the big stage has discovered that famous ‘trophy fever’ and that only breeds a hunger for future success.
The relationship between clients and awards is similar in all aspects. Who doesn’t love having a shelf full of awards to put up on the wall?! Awards are incredibly important for brands, helping them to stand out amongst the basic industry noise. With awards under their belt, they can position themselves as pioneers, market innovators, and leaders in their field. The simple fact is that people would often rather work with a company that has ‘award-winner’ next to their name. It creates a sense of trust in the quality of service you are going to receive.
Generating awards is an agile process that rarely follows a specific theme. However, if there is one overarching trend, it is that awards are handed out for innovation – implying that something is new and never seen before. Most of the time we are talking about special implementations and each new execution brings with it a new set of challenges. In general, you can divide the process into a series of familiar steps:
- Briefing
- Brainstorming
- Concept preparation
- Client presentation
- Implementation
- Documentation and submission preparation
- Strategic award management
When it comes to media awards, teamwork really does make the dream work and that is where the Creative Collective really comes into play. The management and implementation associated with these kinds of special projects is extremely time-consuming and requires various expertise to make it rain trophies on the international stage. That is why having a dedicated team can really make a difference.
Above all, we aim to ensure that our ideas are not just an appendix to an already-planned campaign. Our ideas are integrated as part of the strategy and are designed to take the campaign to the next level. Only then can we create significant added value for the brand and generate more awareness, impact, and visibility within their relevant target market.
After all, behind every award management team is a set of intricate strategies and a wealth of experience and expertise in case development. What sets Mediaplus apart from other agencies is the fact we have dedicated an entire department to the topic of Creative Media and Awards. Thus, we can incorporate years of unique and contextual expertise into everything we do. On the client side of things, they feel far more secure in the hands of a dedicated department and can trust our know-how throughout the process. Many of them even like to be actively involved in the execution, which can create such a rich environment of innovation.
Awards and the implementation of special staging are etched into the DNA of Mediaplus and, therefore, are intrinsically linked with every employee too. Having this kind of shared mindset across not only the entire department, but the entire company as a whole, literally makes winning ‘easier’. Similarly, our learned culture of ÜberCreativity – creativity across all disciplines - successfully contributes to the collaboration with internal and external creative agencies, which is essential for success. Creation and creative media always go hand in hand on stage.
Fostering an environment in which innovation is both encouraged and nurtured is always the first step to creating something new and exciting. At Mediaplus, this is both a team effort and part of the engrained company culture. Within Creative Media and the Creative Collective, we believe that you can train creative thinking like a muscle. If you train it on a regular basis, keep at it, and keep pushing yourself further and further, that muscle will grow and become far stronger than you ever believed possible. That is why we have established the Mediaplus SPARK process. Mediaplus SPARK is a foundation within Mediaplus designed specifically to generate and execute ideas, while also exchanging, transferring knowledge, inspiring, and educating to foster long-term improvements and solutions.
Every month, we offer an inspiration package to the Creative Collective which includes a variety of different topics. For example, a package could contain detailed information about trends like social e-commerce, or details about how best to work with virtual influencers. In addition, we include something called a Zeitgeist List, which is an open document with various insights from different countries all collected together in one place. The premise is always the same, to think innovatively and boldly with a focus on winning the top prizes. Then, the internal jury deliberates and announces a winner, followed by a meeting to receive feedback from the jury about your idea. The best ideas are all visually prepared and then presented to the relevant client, while also being uploaded to our Creative Media Infohub, which is available to everyone at Mediaplus.
We also present ideas from the Mediaplus SPARK process at our Best Cases sessions. Every three months, we hold a remote Best Cases Session for all Mediaplus locations worldwide, showing media cases that have won in Cannes, discuss them openly and thus provide further inspiration which obviously results in our own outstanding ideas.
„It makes me incredibly proud to see how Creative Media has established itself as an integral part of Mediaplus in recent years. The Creative Collective puts so much heart and soul, passion and virtuosity for creative media and brand positioning into every case. And the underlying team spirit is crucial to the overall success of all of them.“
Sabrina Duchow is the director of Creative Media and Awards at Mediaplus Germany, and we sat down with her recently to find out more about how media awards work and their importance within the industry.
“Innovation is like a heartbeat – like an engine that keeps everything running and pushes both us and our client in the right direction. Innovation breaks boundaries, pushes learned patterns and can challenge the status quo. Only those who are agile can quickly adapt to market-specific changes. And by fostering new ways of thinking, innovation encourages us to imagine the unimaginable, then make it a reality.”
