The DMA Awards bellwether: what makes a winner

The DMA Awards.

Notoriously hard to win. Famously rewarding.

You’ve sweated over your campaigns. You’ve stayed late at the office for weeks. But eventually it’s paid off. The client is happy. The team are elated. The results are outstanding.

But just how good is it? How does it fare against the rest of the industry? Could you win a DMA Award?

In collaboration with MC&C and RoyalMail MarketReach, we analysed nearly 1,000 unique campaigns entered into the DMA Awards since 2012, on a range of metrics from ROI to number of channels used.

Here we present the results. Use these key statistics to tailor your entries this year.


Award winners deliver higher ROI

Award winners outperform their competition on a number of metrics. We split campaigns by their vertical median ROI. This gave us half of campaigns above the median and half below. We found that significantly more award winners were in the top half of ROI performers than non-winners.

There was also a step-wise relationship between the colour of the Award won and commercial success. Put simply; the bigger the impact the higher the metal.

Even reporting campaigns results can give entrants a slight edge: those who submitted results figures were slightly more likely to win than those who didn’t submit any results.

Winners use a multi-channel mix

Around two-thirds (62.1%) of campaigns entered since 2012 have been multichannel. When looking at winning campaigns, those that had won awards had used slightly more channels on average (2.66 channels) compared to non-winners (2.32). Whilst this difference was significant, it’s important to note that the variance was high. This means that whilst some winners used only a single channel, some used plenty.

Looking at the following chart, it’s clear to see that social and online display/video are the most prominently used channels by Award winners.

Winners achieve their objectives

When we looked at the objectives for the 975 campaigns we could see a large spread. What was of note was that the key objectives for campaigns have progressed to include traditionally ATL goals, such as brand perception, and even reported market share.

The key take-home message was clear though; whatever the objective, more winners saw an improvement in this metric compared to non-winners. Setting your goals and achieving them is critical for award-winning work.

What’s next?

Feel like your campaign smashed objectives? Think your results soared above the industry median? Have you got total belief in the channels you used to get you those powerful results?

Sounds like you've got something our DMA Awards judges would love to get stuck into.

Entries are now open, with 34 categories to choose from. Find out more and get your best campaigns over to us right here, right now.