Swiss Sponsorship Awards 2018: The winners are...

One of the innovations of the sixth Swiss Sponsorship Awards is that the jury of top-class entrepreneurs, professors, creatives and sponsorship and event experts no longer decides alone who wins the awards in the Sport, Culture, Society and International categories. Just over 120 guests were able to cast their votes electronically live on site. Beforehand, presenter Mascha Santschi summarized the objectives and approaches of each nominated campaign per category and showed a video on the big screen. The guests then had one minute to type their vote into their smartphones. After an impressive musical interlude, the winners were announced in the various categories:

Sports:

Swisscom World Ski Championships St. Moritz. In order to emotionalize the brand as a "partner of ski fans" and prove its technological leadership, the fan messages were milled into the snow over an area the size of 15 football pitches. The campaign "United in the snow. Connected on the net" campaign was extremely well received by fans, the World Ski Championship participants, the jury and then also by the guests at the Swiss Sponsorship Awards.

Culture:

Swisscom Energy air. The award for the best cultural sponsorship also went to Swisscom, for the "Swisscom Energy Air" campaign. Swisscom, which was still in second place after the jury vote, won by a wafer-thin margin, 0.5% ahead of second-placed LGT. The key communicative idea "Don't miss anything together" was implemented emotionally with a 360-degree approach, including a 360-degree virtual reality experience and the Energy Air Fancam, which created a personal memento for every visitor using a giant 360-degree crowd selfie.

Company:

Natural gas Swiss Volunteers. By supporting the "Swiss Volunteers" platform, the Swiss gas industry not only wants to fulfill its social responsibility and create a positive image transfer for the natural gas brand, but also promote volunteer work in sport in general. This was recognized by both the jury and the guests in attendance.

International:

LGT Young Soloists. This project was also nominated in the Culture category, but won in the International category. The music, in this case classical music, arouses emotions, stands for style and class, elegance and through the young talents that are promoted in the orchestra, it also appeals to a young target group.

Two further awards were presented:

In the category "Digital activation" was won by Parisienne La Fabrik. This award is the only one in which the guests were not able to vote, as the evaluation of all nominees in this area was carried out by Elca Informatik AG according to a catalog of criteria from the University of St.Gallen and with the use of various IT tools. Audience Award which the jury could not vote on. The guests present chose "LGT Young Soloists" as the best sponsorship of the year. As a result, LGT will be a member of the jury next year, replacing last year's winner Julius Baer. Dr. Patrick Cotting, jury president and one of the hosts of the event, was delighted with all the winners of the evening, but nevertheless highlighted one: "LGT Young Soloists were not on the jury's list of winners, so it's all the nicer that the audience partially corrected our decisions. I am personally particularly pleased that a classical project has now become the public's favorite and winner of the international award". Commenting on the public vote, he says: "Sponsorship always has a rational and an emotional side. The rational side can be seen in the strategy alignment, in the conception and implementation. This side was assessed by a jury of twelve experts on the basis of 15 criteria. However, there is also an emotional side, which can be seen in how the commitment is communicated, what story it tells and how it can win the hearts of the target groups. This is best judged by the expert audience on site on the basis of a description and emotional images and videos."

Exciting panels:

Before the awards were presented, there were two exciting panels with a top-class line-up. In the first panel, representatives of ABB and Julius Baer together with Patrick Cotting and Vinzenz Kögler discussed the ABB FIA Formula E Championship and Julius Baer's sponsorship activities at the upcoming Formula E Race in Zurich. Both speakers, Nicolas Ziegler from ABB and Marco Parroni from Julius Baer, emphasized how important the long-term relationship in sponsoring is also for business objectives and that both companies can identify with the sustainability and the younger target group of Formula E. The second panel was about sponsoring in the cultural sector. Representatives of the Montreux Jazz Festival and the Locarno Film Festival were invited, as well as a representative of the private bank Pictet and the director of the Volkshochschule Zürich. The various approaches to marketing, the financing of cultural events and sponsorship activities were the subject of lively discussion. There was common ground in the attitude of cultural events to think strategically, remain authentic and not bend over backwards. Not even for the sponsor.You can find more pictures here