INTRO: Can you describe your competition and award using only four words?
Gouden Giraffe Event Awards: The Impact of LIVE.
Q1: What is the added value and purpose of best event award competitions?
Award competitions are extremely important in our branch of marketing and communication. Especially when the awards focus on the impact and effect of our creative concepts and processes for brands, companies and other organisations. It is the showroom of our profession, in which we should not forget that in a relatively short time, we have gone from being just a business party, teambuilding or business trip or stand-alone moment to one of the most important touchpoints in the marketing and communication mix. So then, you are in a battle for marcom budgets, and it takes the best of the best to claim your place.
Q2: What differentiates your competition from others?
At the Golden Giraffe Event Awards, the starting point is impact and effect. We see creativity, sustainability and innovation as the basis, all in service of the ultimate impact. We are very adamant about this: you can hold a top event with a few million, but what does it deliver? That is also the reason why our jury almost exclusively includes marketers and communication professionals from large companies and brands. We have also very deliberately chosen to have a very small number of categories: we award only six jury prizes, two special prizes (innovation and sustainability) and a next-generation award, where the jury comprises students from different courses. Another thing that sets us apart is that whoever organises an awards show for events also has to bare their bottom. Our Golden Giraffe Award show must be a super experience itself.
Q3: What are the novelties of your competition in 2023?
Our awards have already been presented. We did so in the TheaterHangaar – a theatre where the stands and seats rotate 360 degrees with a round stage. Because we feel we have fully evolved with our business of life and events, we chose to present our award show in a multimedia, 360-degree experience. The show told the story of the evolution of our craft: from cavemen using petroglyphs to explain to each other how to catch a bison to an artist singing a song based on a chatbot and children telling us that LIVE is and remains the most important thing for them too. Within that story, we presented the awards.
Q4: How has the pandemic impacted your competition? What have event organisers learned from the pandemic?
We did not have the opportunity to host our awards show in 2020, but because we think awards are so important in our industry, we did present awards in 2021 despite all the restrictions, both for in-person events and digital and online solutions during the corona period. It yielded not only a record number of entries and awards by category for both live and digital but also a very emotional drive-thru concept to announce the finalists and later winners. People came in their cars – a maximum of two people (agency and client). There, they drove from station to station. At one station, their car was washed, at another, the Netherlands’ most famous magician came to do a trick at the car window, and at yet another, they entered a complete dance show. After each act, the finalists were announced in a category six times. At the final station, the All You Need is LOVE Caravan was the place where many a contestant burst into tears after hearing a personal ode recited by the organisation for each event that took part.
The lessons that came with it:
– Digital is complementary and only offers our profession more opportunities and impact.
– Even with constraints, you can touch and move people.
“The x factor and likelihood of a winning event are always in the communicating vessels, which lead to impact, effect, experience, WOW and distinctiveness.”
Q5: What do you consider most important when selecting the expert jury? What criteria do you follow?
The overriding principle is: they must be people who are on the client side (brands, multinationals etc.) and not from a commercial company in the industry itself (agencies, venues, etc). We also select them based on interviews or best cases. Finally, we complement the jury of marketeers and communication professionals with people from science: including a professor of relationship marketing, the education director of a university and the manager of a national fund for fairs and conferences.
Q6: How will you evaluate the projects? What is that X factor you look for in events? Do you have criteria for choosing a great event? What about a poor event?
Everyone is free to sign up. We have a judging system where different building blocks of an event within marketing and communication are valued. Here, we look at creativity, innovation, sustainability, concept, integration into marcom plans, pre-and post-event among others and finally, with the most ‘weight’, effect and impact. The x factor and likelihood of a winning event are always in the communicating vessels as written above, which lead to impact, effect, experience, WOW and distinctiveness.
Q7: Your competition evaluates the best events. Often, event competitions also asses venues, hotels and destinations. There are more advanced matrixes on the market compared to the biased opinion of the jury to evaluate them. There have been cases when a destination is evaluated by a jury member who sees the destination as competition. Thus, doubts often arise about the credibility and objectivity of such evaluations. What is your opinion on this topic?
Awards for the best destination, agency, and location by definition detract from the value, independence and, therefore, the value of the Golden Giraffe. They always bring with them an invisible layer of subjectivity and commercialism. We thus do not do it but consider another time to present the awards in the industry itself. With our Golden Giraffe, therefore, the client now wins: the brand, company or government institution. Perhaps later this year, an award for and by the industry itself.
Q8: How do you see the difference between live event competitions, where event agencies can personally meet jury members and virtual event competitions, taking place online?
One of the main pillars of the Golden Giraffe Event Awards is to learn from the best. That means live jury pitches with an audience, but certainly also networking and meeting the top of our market is of great importance. Learning from the pitches can also be done online, perhaps with less impact than live, but it can be done, but networking is really 100 times better and more effective live. In addition, the Golden Giraffe is the moment when we celebrate our profession together. You have to do that physically live.
Q9: What are your future steps and vision to develop the competition?
We will seek even more cooperation with the umbrella parties in our industry itself but especially with umbrella marketing and communications industry organisations, media and other institutions with influence in the marcom sector.
Q10: What are your priorities to help create a carbon-neutral meetings industry? Can you illustrate with examples and initiatives implemented at your event competition?
A mirror for ourselves is appropriate here. We are certainly not leaders in sustainable steps. Yet we do take those steps. Perhaps the most important step: we decided to award a green Golden Giraffe for the first time this year. That has also motivated us to take steps in the coming edition.
Q11: Can you name a pressing challenge the entire global meetings industry should tackle together?
Here in the Netherlands, we are sometimes called back when we emphasise again that it is all about impact and effect. But the evidence, the scientific substantiation of the strength of our profession is still so limited, we still organise so much without knowing exactly what that wonderful event, that experience and, fortunately, increasingly often that strategic approach to live communication and experience marketing for a brand or company produces. Facts, figures, science, all to strengthen our position within the marcom mix that is the challenge in our eyes! And for me personally: we should no longer call ourselves the event industry. We are the world of LIVE Contact, where all places, all moments, all events, and all departments where there is contact with customers, relations or colleagues are based on our expertise and knowledge. Then you can really move from the experience economy to the transformation economy, where our profession can change and steer behaviour. So maybe the Gouden Giraffe Event Awards will be Gouden Giraffe LIVE Awards next year?
About Sjoerd Weikamp
Sjoerd Weikamp (44), is a proud dad of two daughters. After studying Journalism and Communication Science, Sjoerd rolled into a chief editorship at Reed Business‘ eventmarketingmagazine. After a couple of years, they started their own media platform EventBranche.nl and EvenementOrganiseren.nl in the heart of the Dutch industry of event marketing and live communication. And as we practice what we preach: our multimedia platform has its own events per year. These events vary from network events, congresses, and a beach party for event profs to the Gouden Giraffe Event Awards, the award show for the Dutch event industry that won an award for the best award show in the world. Next to that, Sjoerd is a speaker about trends and developments in the event marketing and live communications industry. He also started NEXTLIVEdcp.com, where they only point out to the target group of marketing and communication professionals. This started in Germany and will be international.
Learn more about Gouden Giraffe here.
