Media Research Group Awards 2023 - Categories & Entry Forms

Media Research Group Awards 2023

Sponsored by UKOM

Entry forms can be downloaded below. Please ensure you  email the completed entry along with the master entry form (below) to jemmar@tapestryresearch.com no later than 5.30pm on Monday 7th August.

Please note you must be a member of the MRG to enter.

The Categories

The Award Categories are:

Master Entry Form – 2023 (nb: one must be submitted along with any/all award submission(s). DOWNLOAD LINK

 

C1. Best Research Team – Media Agency

Sponsored by  

This award recognises the outstanding achievements of an agency’s research/insight team over the past 12 months.

Judges will be looking for research initiatives that have created truly innovative consumer insight.

Has your team directed and delivered an effective cross-media communications strategy with a demonstrable return on investment? We will be looking at audience insight, teams that have provided strategic value to clients, regardless of budget. Or teams that have shown a demonstrable value to new business wins.

Judges will also be looking for research innovation backed by tangible results, client and staff collaboration and a cutting-edge use of tools and data sets. Positive team culture will also contribute to the successful entry.

 

C2: Best Research Team – Media Owner

This award recognises the outstanding achievements of a media owner’s research team over the past 12 months.

Judges will be looking for effective work with both internal and external clients, work that has provided market and consumer insight, helped to direct strategy, improved sales initiatives and supported financial growth.

We will also be looking for quantifiable results, collaboration between staff and client and the financial impact of the team’s research.

And we will particularly take note of research that is cross-departmental and has been implemented at board level. Teams whose work has been used outside an organisation (e.g. in pitches) or raised the profile of the department within the company will stand out in this category. Positive team culture will also contribute to the successful entry.

 

C3: Best Research Team – Research Supplier

Are you the best there is in the industry? Does your team pride itself on effectiveness and innovation?

This award recognises the outstanding achievements of a research supplier team over the past 12 months.

In this category, the judges will put the spotlight on evidence of research work that has impacted positively on an organisation’s media and advertising strategy, showing a tangible upturn in performance and results.

We will be looking at how you have used new technology and the latest methodologies. Judges will also be looking for evidence of innovation, quantifiable results, client and staff collaboration, financial results and budget management.

How has your research made a company think differently about their media campaigns? For example, have you challenged a client brief to produce a better piece of work? Or can you show across the whole project how you’ve added value and made a real impact?

 

C4: Best Research Initiative

This award is all about that new ‘big’ idea. We are looking for a ground-breaking initiative that has changed the face of research and really made competitors sit up and take note.

Judges will be looking for a research project that breaks the mould, challenges our accepted thinking and has made a significant contribution to the discipline of media research.

Whether client, agency or media owner, we want to see evidence of how this initiative has changed thinking and how it has been incorporated in to strategy and tactics as well as the contribution it has made financially. Crucially, we will be looking for an overview of methodology but with a focus on outcomes rather than process.

 

C5: The Nick Blake Award for Rising Star

Sponsored by Channel 4 and Ipsos

This award highlights the best young talent in the media research business and recognises the unique contribution made to your organisation by your own rising star. 

It is a special award in memory of Channel 4 and Ipsos MORI’s former colleague and rising star, Nick Blake, whose life was tragically cut short at a young age in 2012. 

Judges will be looking for evidence of accomplishments that: exceed the initial expectations of managers; contribute materially and measurably to business success; have positive outcomes on working environments and demonstrate potential and ambition.

The employee(s) that you nominate must be under the age of 30 or under as of October 2023. The winner will be the employee seen by judges as having made the most effective contribution to the business and have the most promise to excel further in the industry.

 

C6: Best Trade/Industry Body Research

As a trade body / industry body you will have conducted research into issues that most affect your members.  Perhaps you’re particularly proud of how you’ve engaged with the industry or delivered value from existing data and we’d love to hear about it!

Judges will be looking for original work that not only demonstrates the power of the medium the body represents (and its impact and interaction with other media) but also encourages smarter, more creative and efficient investment and growth within that medium.

We want to see evidence of how the research has generated a host of rich insights that have been incorporated and used by the industry, challenged conventional industry wisdom and directed smarter planning within the advertising industry as a whole.

 

C7: Best Research Innovation Award

Sponsored by 

The award recognises innovation, creativity and ingenuity within media research. 

We are looking for organisations that have applied ‘big thinking’ to the development and application of research by pushing the boundaries of established practice and moving the industry forwards. 

Entries must demonstrate originality on either a technological or methodological level or through the innovative development of existing techniques.

Judges will seek evidence of the effectiveness of the research and how the new techniques employed have added value and created impact for the client.

 

C8: The James Smythe Award for Best Realisation of Research

This award celebrates the communication and dissemination of research in any form, whether visual, through workshops, infographics, multimedia, dashboards or any other way. Entries should highlight what the research reporting and realisation added over more traditional ways of presenting research findings.

Judges will be looking for innovation, creativity and imagination and how the method of research realisation delivered findings in a unique and impactful way.

 

C9: Best International Research

This award celebrates exceptional research projects that look beyond audiences and markets solely in the UK.  Again, judges will be looking for a research project that breaks the mould but this time the focus is on international research projects.

Has your research initiative helped to crack the Asian markets or been a big hit in Latin America? If so, you must provide evidence that there has been a significant return on investment in terms of rich insights which have shaped international strategy and prove it has reaped financial benefits for the client, agency or media owner. 

We will require an overview of your methodology highlighting any innovative approaches but once again, outcomes are more important than processes.

 

C10: Best Collaboration

Sponsored by 

Have you collaborated with one or more agencies / media owners / other organisations to execute a new and exciting piece of research?

This category celebrates teams working together, utilising skills/tools from different companies to overcome an industry challenge or identify new exciting insight.

Judges will be looking for examples of different teams coming together - not teams within the same company or where you would naturally expect a collaborative approach (your clients for instance).  We want to hear about collaboration beyond the day job, we want to be inspired and surprised.

It could be the nature of the teams collaborating that is unique – or the way that they are working together.  Or it could be how the research is being used that marks a project out as being worthy of our Best Collaboration award.

 

C11: Best Tech Innovation in Research

Brand new for 2023, this category seeks to celebrate the best, most innovative and insightful use of technology. The research could use the likes of AI, the Metaverse, Machine Learning Social Media or even a completely new, proprietary technology.

Judges will look for entries which have the most insightful and innovative applications of technology, this could be to solve problems when it comes to the research process itself or it could be a way of uncovering brand new insights.

 

C12: Excellence in Media Effectiveness

Sponsored by 

This category, first introduced in 2020, offers our data and analytics colleagues the opportunity to win an MRG award! Recognising the increasing synergy between research-based effectiveness projects and the worlds of attribution, econometrics and ROI modelling, judges in this category will want to be wowed by the numbers. The project(s) in question could be across any media touchpoint, whether best in class use of single-channel attribution or optimisation, or a project reviewing the media mix for a client across a longer period of time.

The judges for this award will want to see a clear and justified methodological approach, a concise but clear view of the results from the study and the impact this has had on business decision making. Open to all in-house client teams, media owners, media agencies, specialist research or analytics consultancies.