WFA President’s Awards recognise six key industry initiatives around the world

WFA President and Mastercard CMO, Raja Rajamannar, has awarded five outstanding industry initiatives around the world as part of Global Marketer Week in Toronto, with an additional special award for ADVAN Nigeria’s brief writing programme and its important work in championing better marketing locally.

Launched in 2010, the annual President’s Awards recognise initiatives run by national industry associations that help advance the marketer’s agenda and contribute to positive change in the marketing industry and society.

Submissions were judged on their ability to compellingly demonstrate that they had made a measurable impact and could be replicated in other markets.

This year’s winners were selected from 27 initiatives submitted by 14 associations from WFA’s 60-strong membership of national associations.

The 2024 winners are:

Union des marques, France: “Oneframe”

Oneframe is a standardised and open-source carbon calculation framework that measures the greenhouse gas footprint of marketing campaigns from content creation to broadcast. The initiative responds to advertisers' need to measure and reduce the footprint of their campaigns by making carbon data comparable, allowing aggregation and the creation of transparent and reliable reduction trajectories.

bvA, the Netherlands: “The NMO Listening Survey”

In 2023, bvA and other local industry associations launched the NMO Listening survey – a new method of audio audience measurement that enables more targeted audio campaigns with better results. The existing diary method was replaced by a passive app measurement per minute via smartphone. To support members with the transition, bvA also developed a transition index, which enabled advertisers to develop more effective campaigns and led to a 7% increase in radio investment.

Sveriges Annonsörer, Sweden: “Campus Marketing”

Campus Marketing is a training platform designed to help marketing teams gain new knowledge and implement marketing strategies. It combines on-site, teacher-led training for individuals with digital micro-courses available for the rest of the team. The programme helps facilitate new ways of working within marketing teams and ensure long-term competence and knowledge retention as well as higher employee retention through eLearning, workshops, certification, guidance and other resources.

ISBA, UK: “Responsible Retail Media Framework”

The Responsible Retail Media Framework is designed to meet advertisers’ needs to standardise retail media measurement to improve operational efficiencies for both buyers and sellers. It provides a template for development and product delivery, regardless of the maturity of the retailer’s platform. Led by ISBA, the Framework was the result of a year-long, cross-industry collaboration of brands, retailers and their tech and consultancy partners.

ANA, USA: “AIMM Diverse Media GrowthFronts”

GrowthFronts was created to gain greater equity in the media space by maximising brands and publishers’ growth, increasing visibility, access, collaboration, development and investment in diverse media. AIMM, the ANA’s Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing, held more than 1,000 one-to-one meetings in two days between diverse publishers and marketers, media buyers and planners. Investments on the 40 publishers that participated in the 2023 edition increased four times – a collective incremental gain of 34%.

Finally, ADVAN in Nigeria was given a special award for seeking to tackle one of the most persistent challenges facing marketing around the world, the poor briefing that leads directly to less effective creative output. The association launched an annual brief writing training and competition targeted at young brand and marketing managers with the goal of infusing new creative methods in brief writing and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of campaigns. The winners were showcased at the ADVAN Awards for Marketing Excellence.

“Our national associations are doing incredible work on behalf of their brand members - and the broader marketing industry," said Raja Rajamannar, WFA President and Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Mastercard. "Each of these six local initiatives exemplifies the power of collaboration to tackle big issues facing our industry and establish best practices for marketers everywhere. A sincere congratulations to this year’s winners.”

For more information about the President's Awards, visit wfanet.org/president-awards