Brand awards chosen by the people

Saturday, 06 February 2010 16:59

YET another brand award programme has been introduced in Malaysia, but the organisers insist that it differs from the others and will be the most transparent and prestigious of them all. By M. HAFIDZ MAHPAR, StarBiz

The Putra Brand Awards was launched last month as an extension of Malaysia’s Most Valuable Brands (MMVB), a three-year-old brand valuation and recognition exercise initiated by the Association of Accredited Advertising Agents (4As).

It is the only brand award endorsed by Malaysian External Trade Development Corp (Matrade), the Malaysian Advertisers Association, the Media Specialists Association and the Branding Association of Malaysia.

MMVB identifies best brands by financial valuation and is thus limited only to listed companies whose financial data are easily available, but the Putra Brand Awards is based on consumer preferences and thus covers all local brands and the small and medium-scale enterprises.

Putra Brand Awards chairman Jennifer Chan, who is also a council member of the 4As, says the 4As decided to have another form of brand measurement besides the MMVB, which has been very successful but does not extend to brands that are not listed.

"That was the beginning of Putra Brand Awards, and one of our partners is (online research company) Pulse Group," she says.

The Putra Brand Awards, which has 18 product/service categories for which gold, silver and bronze awards will be presented, used an online survey that covered 6,000 consumers throughout Malaysia.

Pulse Group chief executive officer Bob Chua says it is the largest consumer research sampling of its kind here and covered respondents aged 16 years and above in urban and semi-urban areas.

"The questions revolve around brand awareness, relevance to consumers and brand personality, and we come up with a Brand Power score to determine the strongest brands per category," he says.

"Compared with other brand awards in the market, this is a very robust methodology and has a very large scale, so it becomes a very credible selection process," he says.

There was a pre-selection process as well whereby a brand council, made up of agency strategic planners, agency heads and representatives of the aforementioned associations, shortlisted up to 10 brands per category. The consumer poll, which was completed recently, narrowed it down to the top three brands per category.

All the brand owners earlier shortlisted by the council were asked to give a written submission on their brand health (including challenges faced by the brand and how the brand performed in the past year), and the MMVB board of governors will evaluate and finally approve the gold, silver and bronze winners from each category, taking into consideration the consumer poll results.

"So it's a pull and push approach. It’s not just consumers selecting the brands but also the owners justifying the relevance of their brands and why they should be judged the top brands," Chua says.

"Very few other brand awards here are based on consumer choice, very few have such a big sample, and almost none of them have such a network of advisers that really represents the industry. So this makes the Putra Brand Awards very different.

"We want to make sure the recognition that brand owners get from it is really something to be proud of. It’s an award that is truly chosen by the people and based on a lot of integrity.”

Chan says that the awards process is very credible and transparent given the large sample size of consumers – not advertisers or others who have vested interest in the brands – and the involvement of industry experts and a reputable board of governors.

For the first year, there is no plan for an awards book, but Chan expects to have one next year.

The award presentation ceremony is scheduled for March 12.