REGGIE Award Categories

Preview 2023 program categories below!

Please note that many campaigns fit into multiple categories. When preparing entries, please review all the categories to find the ones that best apply to your campaign.

Age-Targeted Marketing

Programs/campaigns which target a specific age range such as kids, Gen Z, Millennials, seniors or other specific age groupings. Judges will be looking for how you tailored your messaging and brand experience to reach your specific demographic. Include demographic description, insights regarding the target, and campaign results.

Business-to-Business Marketing

Programs/campaigns which target business partners, including trade programs, instead of consumers. Entries in this category should be innovative campaigns that were created to communicate, collaborate with or motivate another business.

Challenger Brand Marketing

This category recognizes those programs/campaigns that utilized innovative brand activation strategies to support an emerging, disruptor or challenger brand competing against much larger, better funded or more established brands.

Content Marketing

Winners of this category have developed or integrated content that engaged, interacted with, entertained, informed, or told a story to a target audience. Entries will demonstrate how they changed, enhanced, or connected with constituents to create a desired behavior. This can include user-generated content, augmented reality, online and offline media, branded entertainment, gaming, narrative, social content, or other types of content, in any form.

Creativity and Innovation

Programs/campaigns that took the marketplace by storm and challenged the status quo with a Big Idea based on out-of-the-box thinking. The innovation could be in the activation idea itself or relating to the way it was communicated, the technology used, or media selection. Include the risks you took in your entry, what barriers you overcame, and how you executed your original idea.

Digital, Social or Mobile Marketing

This category includes programs/campaigns involving mobile sites, apps, geo-location strategies, email campaigns, and web-based campaigns. Programs/campaigns can be specifically designed to provide a unique online experience or a straightforward path to purchase on a mobile device or can reward the best use of Social Media tools (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, etc.) targeted to consumers as the primary communication tactic/strategy to reach your objectives.

Entertainment or Sports Marketing and/or Sponsorship 

Programs/campaigns that involved the use of an entertainment or licensed property to differentiate a brand and activate its positioning, or involved a specific sport, league, team, or athlete, to bring the brand’s positioning to life. The typical entry in this category has included an entertainment (movie, TV, streaming, live event) or music-related property, and may have included sponsorship of an existing entity, or how a brand activated with a sports element, how a team or league sponsorship was activated, or brand activations for the sport, competition (Olympics, Ryder Cup, etc.), league, team, and/or athlete themselves. Campaigns for the entertainment or sports entity themselves are also eligible.

Experiential Marketing (Live Events or Installations)

This category highlights programs/campaigns that touched consumers by allowing them to become active participants through sampling, hands-on product demos, immersive events, tours, or live, special installations. Campaigns can be in support of a single or multiple locations. Winning campaigns will prove how your customers interacted with your product or service via a sensory experience that made a lasting impression.

Experiential Marketing (Virtual Events) 

This category highlights programs/campaigns that touched consumers by allowing them to become active participants through online and offline activities. Campaigns with virtual or other non-in-person or on-demand experiences will compete in this category. Winning campaigns will prove how your customers interacted with your product or service via a sensory experience that made a lasting impression.

Gaming or eSports Marketing 

Programs/campaigns that involved a specific video game, Esports, related competition and/or gaming element to differentiate a brand and bring the brand’s positioning to life. The entry can be for how a brand activated with a specific game, league, team or personality, or brand activations for the game, competition, league, team, and/ or athlete themselves.

Holiday or Seasonal Marketing

This category will recognize those programs/campaigns that utilized innovative brand activation strategies to support a brand that competed in and leveraged the unique aspects of a specific holiday (Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, Halloween), special day (National Donut Day, for example), or themed selling season (Spring Cleaning, Back to School).

Influencer Marketing

This category rewards the best use of Influencer Marketing - marketing that utilized individuals, groups of individuals, groups, or associations to help advocate for the brand or product to gain credibility with target consumers as the primary communication tactic/strategy to reach your objectives. Programs/campaigns can include any type of influencers, from mini to TikTok stars to national celebrities, and anything in between.

Local, Regional or Market Specific Marketing

Programs/campaigns directed toward consumers on a local or regional level or targeted to specific geographic markets of any size. Entries in this category will provide information on how the specific area was selected and explain the process of designing the campaign.

Loyalty, Rewards or Retention Marketing NEW

Your marketing attracts customers to your products — but how do you keep them coming back? Research tells us it costs five times as much to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one, and that repeat customers spend over 30% more than new customers — so building solid relationships with your clientele is critical to competing effectively in the marketplace.

This category will spotlight the brands that are investing in retention or customer service efforts that drive loyalty and establish long-standing relationships with their customers. The effort must be designed to assist, retain, and/or reward customers and demonstrate the results the effort delivered for the business.

Metaverse Marketing & Beyond NEW

As the technological landscape of the marketing world advances and evolves, this new category seeks to honor brand-building programs/campaigns that targeted consumers in the metaverse or via other new, future-focused technologies. Entries in this category can include content activated using AR, VR, NFTs, etc. that allowed consumers to bring their digital identity with them as they engage in this digital environment.

Multicultural or Lifestyle Segment Marketing

Programs/campaigns targeted to specific demographic or lifestyle consumer groups to promote inclusion for diverse communities such as African American, American Indian or Indigenous, Asian, Hispanic, LGBTQ+, People with Disabilities, specific religion, specific gender, etc. Judges will be looking for how you tailored your messaging and brand experience to reach your specific segment. Include segment description, insights regarding the segment, and campaign results.

National Consumer Brand Activation Marketing

Campaigns targeted toward consumers on a national level (within a single country) utilizing a cross-discipline brand activation plan. Entries must prove how the team strategized and executed the campaign to reach the masses and demonstrate integrated Brand Activation elements across various touch points.

New Product or Service Launch

Programs/campaigns designed to introduce new products or services into the marketplace. Entries in this category should describe how you identified the opportunity and created your launch plan.

Partnership Marketing

Submissions in this category must be programs/campaigns that involved two or more partners. Entries can be of various types of partnerships — ones involving two or more brands/marketers, or a brand partnering with a cause, film/entertainment property, music property, or sports league/team/governing body. Successful submissions will explain the opportunity between partners and how the collaboration affected results for all partners.

Promotion Marketing

Programs/campaigns that included marketing tactics that directly encouraged purchase; influenced trial, repeat, or quantity of purchase; and were very measurable in volume, share, and profit. Tactics can include couponing, sweepstakes, sampling, special packaging, premiums, licensed properties, refunds, and rebate-related programs.

Purpose, Cause, or Charity Marketing

This award, supported by the ANA Center for Brand Purpose, is for the program/ campaign that makes a positive impact on society via a social cause, an environmental/sustainability effort, or support of a charity/cause. This can include pro bono campaigns, those involving donations, marketing campaigns developed for the good of a cause, corporate responsibility programs, partnerships, etc. We want to see the passion behind your campaign and how you effectively made a difference in bringing your brand purpose to life.

Rebranding, Repositioning or Reintroducing Brand Marketing

Strong brands have solid positioning, sharp strategies, and well-targeted executions. But nothing lasts forever and often brands are in need of a refresh to regain previous successes. This category includes programs/campaigns that support a company or brand that is changing, updating, or refreshing its positioning, going through an overall rebranding, or introducing to consumers after a hiatus.

Shopper, Commerce, Retailer Specific or Omnichannel Marketing

Entries in this category are either shopper marketing or omnichannel programs/campaigns developed by the brand (or jointly with brand/retailer) to reach shoppers through retail partners. Retailers are eligible to enter this category directly if the campaign was based on shopper or retail-led insights. If retail-specific, include marketing solutions developed or customized for or by a specific retailer to drive sales. These may be programs that use promotion, merchandising, Retail Media, and other tools, and may be designed around an occasion, holiday, season, category, or store-wide program, either initiated by a retailer or brand. Winning submissions will present the insight(s) and how you drove results for both the retailer and the brand.

Small Budget Brand Activation Marketing (Overall Budget Less than $500,000)

This category is for Brand Activation programs/campaigns that achieved magic and effectiveness on a tight budget. And, yes, that’s an all-in number, including media.

Travel and Tourism Marketing - 2023 REGGIE Spotlight Category NEW

The REGGIE Spotlight category highlights a discipline, segment or industry within marketing that is trending and is of great interest to marketers because of the challenges they faced.

Travel was one of the industries most impacted by COVID-19 and this category looks to honor brands who created innovative travel and tourist-based programs/campaigns that promoted interest in travel for business or pleasure to destinations near and far. Entries in this category should show how your brand creatively targeted consumers to engage your services or attract them to your destination including but not limited to airlines, rental cars, hotels, home rental services, cruise lines and destination management companies. 

Specialty Award

REGGIE GEM Award NEW

Spotlighting the industry's change makers and influencers committed to the authentic, accurate portrayals of women and girls in their marketing efforts.

Gender inequality is the one inequality that is truly global in scope. Yet, we know that marketing and media can create impactful change by addressing how women and girls are portrayed in advertising and marketing content. Given this, the ANA’s SeeHer initiative, whose mission is to drive the accurate portrayal of women and girls in media, advertising, marketing and entertainment, has created a unique opportunity for all REGGIE Award applicants – The ANA REGGIE GEM^® Award.

The ANA REGGIE GEM Award will honor the top creative and impactful work that exemplifies the best in class accurate and authentic portrayal of women and/or girls in Brand Activation campaigns.