It might seem a long way away - the ceremony takes place towards the end of the year, after all - but this year's IPA Effectiveness Awards are steadily working towards their conclusion. The 2011 event is open to campaigns with budgets of up to £2.5m only; "big-budget" and "small-budget" campaigns are considered on alternate years. And the word from the IPA is that they've received 28 entries for 2011 from as far afield as Colombia and China.
The IPA has also provided a breakdown of the various media used for each entry, and it seems that, for today's marketers, having comparatively little money to spend is not much of a barrier to putting together an ambitious media plan. The typical 2011 campaign used six different channels to get its message across; this compares to just over nine for winning cases in 2010, the most recent "big budget" year. Also, the most-used channels for 2011 entries were TV and campaign websites, with online display and PR close behind.
This could suggest that lessons from previous IPA publications on getting the media mix right - New Models of Marketing Effectiveness, which found that campaigns are more effective the more media channels are used, and Marketing in the Era of Accountability, which suggested that TV remains the most effective media channel of all - are being heeded by agencies.
Or they might have referred to the precedents set by previous winners when putting together their entries. Warc publishes a total of 1,291 IPA Effectiveness cases going back to 1980; these include the full set of 2009 cases, the last "small budget" year.
You can also get additional information about this year's IPA Effectiveness Awards on the event's website.
