May 2005
Best Practices: Big rewards

CMP Media launches an awards program, leveraging the value of its VARBusiness magazine and XChange Tech Innovators Conference

By Julie Ritzer Ross

When CMP Media launched the XChange Tech Innovators Conference, a three-day networking event for solution providers and vendors, in 2003, a key element was the presentation of CMP’s VARBusiness Tech Innovators Choice Awards.

“Attendees of the conference are leading-edge technology integrators and vendors; we believed that for them, the presentation of awards and the exposure to winners’ solutions would add value to the event,” says Gordon Plutsky, Marketing Director, CMP Channel Group.

“Additionally, VARBusiness ranks as the No. 1 publication targeted to solution providers — namely value-added resellers (VARs). We saw the awards as a branding stake for the magazine and as an opportunity to profit through the sale of sponsorships and associated advertising,” he says.

To maximize participation in the program, CMP promotes it heavily via editorial announcements and house ads in VARBusiness and Computer Reseller News (another CMP publication). Additional announcements appear on the XChange Conferences and VARBusiness Web sites. CMP received 466 award applications in 2004, a 41 percent increase from the 333 applications received the previous year.

Products eligible to win awards must have been introduced, upgraded or completely revised during the competition year. Participants are also eligible to win one Overall Top Innovator and one Editors’ Choice award bestowed as adjuncts to individual awards for top products within each of the nine award categories.

VARBusiness’ editorial staff review all entries, culling the most innovative products as finalists. For each category, at least two volunteer judges, chosen from a select group of major solution providers and integrators, rate finalists’ entries on a scale of one to 10 for such characteristics as usefulness, price/performance, revenue potential, “overall coolness,” and the “new-and-improved” factor, says Nancy Hammervik, XChange Events Executive Director. The top-scoring product is named the VARBusiness Tech Innovators Choice. Whatever the outcome, all finalists receive recognition in VARBusiness’ annual “State of Technology” issue, published in mid-December.

Awards are presented at an informal cocktail party that attracts about 300 conference attendees. Hosting the party costs CMP and XChange about $50,000.

Funds for the party come from corporate sponsorship of the awards. Sponsorship packages cost $25,000 net and have a grand total value of $62,020. Each package covers inclusion of the sponsor’s logo in all event collateral and ads, admission to all conference events and social events, access to a “VIP Solution Provider” contact list for pre-event mailings and demographic information, space in the XChange Solutions Pavilion on the show floor, write-ups and profiles in the Xchange Conference Guide show directory and more. Three technology vendors signed on as corporate award sponsors in 2003; six, in 2004.

Plutsky and Hammervik deem the awards program a complete success. “We have made money from the sponsorships and the advertising, reaping about a 50 percent margin,” Plutsky notes, adding that VARBusiness and XChange Conferences “split the proceeds down the middle.”

To cover editorial costs and fund the cocktail party, CMP is considering charging a fee to enter the competition, as well as increasing the sponsorship price. “One lesson we’ve learned is that when it comes to interest in awards, it’s better to overestimate than to underestimate, and we had more entries than we expected,” Plutsky admits. Collecting an entry fee, at least, would enable the company to hire freelancers to process the award applications, he says.

Receiving an unexpectedly high volume of entries in 2003 also taught them to promote the awards competition about six weeks earlier the second time around (about four months out from the show).

“Lots of entries is not a hard problem to have,” Hammervik says. “The awards have been a win-win proposition for us, our readers and our advertisers.”