Public Relations Policy

Public Relations Policy
The A’ Design Award Public Relations Policy is actually very straightforward. We gain publicity by promoting our laureates (see our Media Relations Policy). The more publicity we get, the more people join the competition. The more people join the competition, the more revenue we have. The more revenue we have the more we could spend to promote our laureates or to invest in our philanthropic goal of making the World a better place by creating incentives and initiatives for designers to come up with better products that benefit and advance society. We are actually in a very lucky position; we can tap into a positive spiral of growth by promoting our laureates and their good design work. Given all this, our Public Relations Policy is simple; we must heavily focus on promoting the A’ Design Award laureates; the award winning designers, artists, architects and brands. Just to be very clear; our advertising policy is to advertise the winners first.

Advertising the award winners and spending most of our budget solely for promoting the awarded designers will create the highest value for both the A’ Design Award as well as the great designers, amazing brands, extraordinary artists and outstanding architects who take part in the competition.

Every year, it is our duty to figure out prominent distribution and dissemination channels, including but not limited to magazines, publications, information portals, social networks, news aggregators, and press release distribution channels. Once we determine the right dissemination and publicity channels, we should engage these channels, first via partnership and collaboration possibilities and then via commercial content sponsorship, advertorial and editorial placements; if we cannot get an organic placement, we might buy the placement, especially if the dissemination channel is relevant; a relevant dissemination channel should itself be prestigious and desirable; desirable for winners to get featured at; award winners like to get placement in very prominent publications for sure but they also wish to get featured at high volume advertising channels that could also reach millions. We shall follow a multi-dimensional marketing strategy to promote the winners. We shall get in touch with hundreds of publications whenever possible.

We should avoid using stupid, lame and lazy advertising strategies such as banner advertising; instead we should focus on the best content we have; the award winning works; we must promote the award winning works first by getting in touch with editors and influencers in a hope to get the best content we have – the award winning works featured and published. It really matters to promote the winners; it is really relevant to spend our money for advertising the laureates; we have incentive to spend most of our money advertising laureates; we get the highest return on investment when we spend our money for advertising, promoting and disseminating winning works.

Sure we must also be present where our audience are, except for a few cases, we should not spend a significant part of our budget for outright advertising the award program; the exceptions are the design competition list and aggregator services, or other design awards who would promote for us. We should not spend our money just to publish our call for entries; except near for the deadlines, where doing so makes financial sense; we should advertise call for entries and call for submissions fifteen (15) days before each deadline; this is relevant because we also need to reach new audiences to have fresh entries that we could promote. In all other periods, our content and advertising shall focus on advertising the award winning works, such as promoting the best designs via category based showcases, top entry highlights and similar.

Finally, we must be smart. We should develop new and interesting strategies each year to get involved with press members and influencers who could help us promote the design award, but most importantly the award winning designers. Strategies we could develop should focus both on the quality as well as quantity aspects; we shall find a good balance of promotion quality and quantity. We shall also invite each year, distinctive designers, artists and architects who could help us set a higher bar for quality. Whatever we do, we must stick to our mission and vision statement; we should focus on creating value; for all partakers.

The A' Design Award and Competition was established to promote good design work that advances and contributes to society.