Promotional Gift Award – FAQ

The Promotional Gift Award is an international competition that distinguishes creative and courageously implemented promotional products or product range concepts.

Since 2003.

WA Media GmbH, Cologne.

German and international manufacturers, importers, distributors, designers, agencies and promoting companies are allowed to take part.

A lot of publicity: The award-winning companies receive an Award sculpture for each award-winning product, a certificate as well as digital data sets to design one’s own further advertising material. The Awards will be presented at the “HAPTICA® live” on March 17, 2021 in Bonn.
Furthermore, the award-winning products will be communicated via coverage in the trade magazines Werbeartikel Nachrichten, Promotion Products, HAPTICA® and eppi magazine as well as in the respective newsletters and on the web. This corresponds to a media value of over €3,000.

The Promotional Gift Award serves as a benchmark across the market, ensures the award winners publicity and underlines your innovative strength and creativity to customers, business partners and competitors as well as within your own company. In addition to presence in the media, the award has an image profiling effect for the winners. It gives them a USP, which distinguishes them from their competitors and is a quality seal conferred by an independent, overarching institution.

Firstly, you register your product using the registration form and upload photos of the product onto it. Then, send in your product by post, because in order to assess the entries, the jury needs the original product including accessories like batteries, etc.

The jury decides which category the entry is assigned to. This has no influence over whether the items win a Promotional Gift Award or not, but instead serves to ensure a clear content-related structure of the Award.

Freely tradable merchandise, individual items, products that are not ready for serial production, semi-finished goods, services and intangible products cannot be submitted to the Promotional Gift Award.

The entry deadline is November 27, 2020, the products have to reach us by this date. However, you can register immediately, even if the product won’t be ready until just before the entry deadline, because it is only just being launched onto the market, for example.

No, you can register as many products as you like – even entire product range concepts. The only condition: Your product is not allowed to have already been submitted for entry to a previous Promotional Gift Award competition.

No, the product doesn’t have to be a new development from the current year. As long as they have not already taken part in the Promotional Gift Award, you can also submit best practices or products from previous years.

Further developments belong to the industry’s creative tasks and services and often increase the communicative factor of a well-known product. Therefore, further developments of products can be submitted for entry to the Promotional Gift Award, even if an older version of the product has already taken part.

The rubric “Custom-made Designs”, which distinguishes developments made to meet customers’ individual requirements, was introduced precisely for this purpose.

Definitely: You have the opportunity during the registration process to explain exactly how your product works, what is special about it and for what concrete application it has been developed. You can additionally attach photos, videos or other visual material for the jury that make your product easier to understand.

Successful campaigns and forms of application are distinguished in the category “Best Practice”. This category was introduced in 2013, among others in order to give distributors, agencies and users the opportunity to take part in the Promotional Gift Award.

Further developments, new shapes or new technical approaches are particularly important, especially in the case of frequently implemented product groups, in order to increase the communicative potential – i.e. the attention that can be attracted through such a product. Clever ideas in this sector should thus also be rewarded in the same way as totally new product developments. In order to differentiate here, the Promotional Gift Award is conferred in different categories.

The members of the jury of Promotional Gift Award 2021 are:

Jens Bräunig
VfB Stuttgart, Stuttgart

Elke Deckert
Schlumberger Vertriebsgesellschaft, Meckenheim

Michael Mätzener
diewerbeartikel gmbh, CH-Schwyz

Michael Scherer
WA Media GmbH, Cologne

Michael Witzorrek
merchandise.blog, Hamburg

Martin Zettl
marke|ding|, A-Wels

The jury inspects all of the entries thoroughly and using an objective system awards the entries points for different aspects, according to which the product is assessed. This prevents the decision being influenced by personal taste. All five judges have to assess a product independently from each other, so that they don’t come to joint agreements and are not influenced by their fellow jury members’ opinions. The product’s suitability as a promotional product, i.e. a communicative messenger, is decisive. In principle, the more accurately you underline why your product is prize-worthy in the registration documents on submitting your product, the easier it is for the jury to assess your product accurately.

  1. Product idea
    • Novelty value of the product
    • Use for the recipient
    • New customising options
    • Design flexibility
  2. Design
    • Aesthetical aspects of the design language from the colours through to the material mix
    • Functional aspects
  3. Production quality
    • Functionality
    • Workmanship
    • Quality of the materials used
    • Quality of the embellishment
    • Haptic quality
  4. Sustainability
    • Environmental-friendliness
    • Socially responsible production
    • Implementation of renewable energy
    • Durability of the products, recyclability
    • Transparency of the production cycle
  5. Communicative potential
    • Visual representation of the advertising message
    • Options for dialogue between the sender and the recipient
    • Response elements
    • Multiplicator effects
    • Special suitability for a specific target group

• Early bird price: 180 Euros (up until September 30, 2020)
• Regular price: 220 Euros (October 1 until 31, 2020)
• Late bird price: 250 Euros (November 1 until 27, 2020)
per submitted item plus VAT.
Product ranges upon agreement. Transport costs including
possible customs duties are born by the participant.

A comprehensive registration form can be found here, it can be used to describe your product and to apply for entry. Photos of the product can also be uploaded.

Daniela Dragunova (Project Management)
Tel.: +49/221/689 11-53
Fax: +49/221/689 11-10
dragunova@waorg.com		         Ilka Baum
Tel.: +49/221/689 11-16
Fax.: +49/221/689 11-10
baum@waorg.com

WA Media GmbH
PROMOTIONAL GIFT AWARD
Walther Str.49–51 | Geb.32
51069 Köln | Germany

WA Media GmbH

Based in Cologne, WA Media GmbH, which was founded in 1982 as WA Publishing, is a media service provider, information platform and event organiser for haptic advertising themes. The portfolio of the specialist publisher includes diverse magazines for the German and European promotional products and marketing market: the domestic industry publication Werbeartikel Nachrichten and the English-language eppi magazine as well as the two end user magazines Promotion Products and HAPTICA®. Furthermore, WA Media organises the “HAPTICA® live – The Experience of Haptic Advertising” and the international Promotional Gift Award competition on an annual basis. Accompanying newsletters, web portals and Social Media activities as well as the specialist book “Haptic Advertising. The practical handbook for the promotional product” round off the offer.
pga logo2017 22 - Promotional Gift Award - FAQ

Contact

For further information, please feel free to contact us:

WA Media GmbH
Waltherstr. 49-51
Geb. 32
51069 Köln

Daniela Dragunova (Project Management)
Tel.: +49/221/689 11-53
Fax: +49/221/689 11-10
dragunova@waorg.com		Ilka Baum
Tel.: +49/221/689 11-16
Fax.: +49/221/689 11-10
baum@waorg.com