Admap Prize winners announced

LONDON: The Admap Prize 2013 has been won by Mike Follett, for his essay titled 'Thinking in 3D'. Follett, currently studying for an MBA at Imperial College Business School, was formerly head of planning at DDB in India and planning director at The Red Brick Road in London.

Entrants to the Admap Prize, which was sponsored by Kantar, were asked to write an essay addressing the question 'Can brands maximise profits and be a force for social good?' Follett argued that marrying multiple objectives together three-dimensionally is the route to business success rather than the single goal of profit.

Colin Mitchell, worldwide planning director at Ogilvy & Mather and an Admap Prize judge, described Follett's work as "an education" with "a strong central idea".

"Companies have different objectives and these require trade-offs," he said. "Trade-offs feels closer to the truth and a more practical way of thinking about policy, than, say, a Balanced Scorecard."

The Silver award was won by Andrew Curry, a director of The Futures Company, and Andy Stubbings, global consumer insights manager at Bacardi, with an essay titled 'The brand: the machine that makes a difference'.

They suggested that the concept of businesses simply chasing shareholder value was relatively recent and flawed, but those that also had a social purpose stood out more, engendered loyalty and achieved greater heights than they would otherwise attain.

The judges were tied on Bronze and so decided on two awards. Guy Champniss of Meltwater Consulting took one for an essay titled 'Social Good, Personal Best: how a basic selfish desire may be just what business and society need'. A second went to Brian Millar of Sense Worldwide for his essay titled 'Syrup, cows and the voice of the commons: how planning skills can save the world for fun and profit.'

A further two essays were commended by the judges: 'What do you do for a living?' by JWT's board planning director Claire Jackson and 'The rise of the new billion dollar brands' by Ogilvy & Mather's group planning director Freya Williams.

Admap Editor Colin Grimshaw said cause marketing and its role in commercial enterprises was a hotly debated issue and a major challenge for brands, big and small, across every region in the world.

"The question for brands is, are the pursuit of profit and doing social good conflicting objectives, or does one beget the other? Does corporate social responsibility directly add value and grow the business, or is it simply a marketing/PR expense, a cost of doing business?"

The Gold award and a $5,000 cheque will be presented to Follett at a special Admap Prize celebration event at Cannes Lions on June 19th.

All the awarded and commended essays will be published in the June issue of Admap and online at www.warc.com/admap from June 1st. Visit www.warc.com/admapprize2013 for more details.

Data sourced from Warc , 22 May 2013

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