Everything starts with dialogue

WW: The Swiss Dialog Marketing Award has a new concept. What was the motivation for these changes?
Erik Neumann: For six years, the Swiss Direct Marketing Association (SDV) had its award presented by an external licensee. In 2009, we decided to bring the award closer to the association again. After all, the Dialog Marketing Award is the most important event for our association, allowing us to present ourselves to the public. We wanted to reposition the event because we realized that the award had developed in a direction that no longer did us or dialogue marketing in Switzerland justice. We had lost credibility and slipped into a corner where our concerns were no longer discussed as intensively.

They talked more about the show?
The Award Night is just the culmination of a process that extends over the whole year. It starts with an application for the submission, a theme is defined that you want to play on, then come the submissions, the vernissage, the exhibition, the cooperation with the sponsors. The structural changes are now aimed at making dialog marketing a more visible focus of our association's activities throughout the year. At the Award Night, we then have to find a good balance between the gala evening and the awards ceremony. The presentation of the best dialog work in the industry must once again come to the fore. To this end, we have also upgraded the jury with top specialists.

The price is now borne by an association?
This is only of an organizational nature. The "Schweizer Dialogmarketing Preis" association means a mathematical separation from the association, so that the SDV is secured. We have our own budget, which we then collect from sponsors and dialog friends. At the end of the year, we have to be in the black.

Which agencies design the event?
We initiated a screening process in 2009. A committee of board members then decided in favor of the event agency Standing Ovation. They did a very professional job at the award night. We developed the communication motto and the measures together with Ogilvy One.

What does the SDV expect from this new orientation?
We have set ourselves various quantitative and qualitative goals. The qualitative goals focus on image. We want to be perceived in the market again. We also want dialog marketing to return to the creative ranking of Werbewoche. This is an expression of relevance in the Swiss market, when the top creatives also say: Okay, this is a prize, it's important. An award that really recognizes the most important dialogue marketing work. There are many prizes with different weightings and we claim to seek a balance in pricing between creative performance, brand fit, brand message, campaign capability and efficiency. The economic relevance of a campaign is very important to us. We have also defined quantitative targets. We want to stop and even reverse the negative trend in submissions.

How can quality be achieved?
An important factor in our qualitative goals is that we adapt and orient ourselves internationally. That is why we have also looked at international judging criteria and international standards in terms of category. This means that we have looked at Cannes, London International, Clio Miami or Caples Award as well as the Dialog Marketing Award in Germany and Austria. We base our benchmarking on these competitions. They show us which screws we need to turn in order to really achieve the desired relevance.greichsten bei Award 2011: Agentur am Flughafen. Board of Directors SDV.

Compared to other countries, where do Swiss works stand in terms of quality?
We have seen a very good vintage this year. In the past, we were sometimes ridiculed. I think that was an injustice to Switzerland. The association didn't manage to actually get the best campaigns to enter the competition. The agencies didn't see the relevance and therefore didn't want to enter. As a result, there were many great things that never even made it to the jury. But that's what the public then perceives. In the meantime, feedback from my colleagues in Germany and Austria has also confirmed that we are very good in Switzerland. We now have to wait and see how the work that has just won awards performs in other award shows. Swiss agencies have already done well at the DMPreis of our sister association in Germany. Now we are waiting for the big show in Cannes. Dialogue is very important there.

So why is the Swiss ADC still so neglected?
I believe that direct marketing in Switzerland has always been a very technically oriented topic. Technology is for technology lovers. We have wasted a lot of potential in creative communication. Because extremely specialized direct marketing agencies have emerged in Switzerland, which have also occupied the term direct marketing for themselves, we have been pushed into this technical corner. To counteract this, we deliberately call our award the Dialog Marketing Award. Dialog marketing is an important part of direct marketing and, as the word suggests, it is about the dialog that we want to initiate and conduct. In this respect, dialog marketing is much less a discipline than a communicative attitude. This also plays an increasingly important role in many other classic disciplines and especially in the online sector. I believe that we have been treated so neglected in Switzerland in the past because we have neglected the topic of dialog - this attitude in communication - in favor of direct marketing. And direct marketing is very salesy, promotional and sales-oriented. These measures still exist, but a campaign based on dialog has many other and additional facets. We have to get there and we have taken a good step. We are already included in the ranking as a variable category and we find that good and interesting.

Are you getting closer?
Among our entrants, it is noticeable that the top 5 includes two more traditional agencies, the Y&R Group and Spillmann Felser Leo Burnett. If you look at the top 10, half of them are classic advertising agencies. There are three classically oriented agencies among the top 7 on the shortlist. As the icing on the cake, the number 2 from the creative ranking, SFLB, also came off as the second best agency behind the agency at the airport. This means that original direct agencies were left behind by the classic agencies. This shows a bit of the change, which is certainly very strongly characterized by the online sector, but also by ambient measures, which we evaluate.

Interview: Andreas Panzeri