New categories for Most Awards live voting

The overall goal of the Most Awards is to motivate media owners and media agencies to improve their businesses through service performance. Media agency employees are invited to rate the performance of the media owner sales teams with whom they have frequent contact and vice versa. The survey asks respondents to select the companies that they wish to vote for and requires that they be scored against a number of specific performance criteria. Companies are then ranked according to this data.

After consideration of the suggestions made in the focus groups held in Johannesburg and Cape Town earlier this year, the following enhancements have been made to take the methodology to a new level of robustness.

• Streamlining the survey - the online questionnaire has been re-designed in order to make it more contemporary and user-friendly. The design utilises colour-coding, drop down bars, and other design elements to guide respondents clearly and effectively through the survey.

• Number of votes for Media Owner survey raised to 50 - the minimum number of votes for the Media Owner survey has increased from 30 to 50 as the qualifying requirement. The higher minimum qualifying threshold will yield a significantly improved degree of robustness and reliability in the Most Awards scores. The threshold for the Media Owner Lamb Awards will be raised from 25-29 to 30-49. The threshold number of votes for the Media Agency survey remains at 30 and at 25-29 for the Lamb Award.

• Criteria enhanced - the primary goal of the following changes in criteria is to reflect more accurately the reality of the service relationship between media agencies and media owners.

Media owner criteria

The six criteria for the media owner survey (completed by media agencies):

1. Knowledge of own brands and the media landscape

2. Sales Service Delivery
3. Administration Service Delivery
4. Knowledge of client brands and the market landscape
5. Innovation

6. Involvement

Service Delivery has been changed to Sales Service Delivery, which measures the ability to ‘sell’ and to service the media agency client. Authority has been replaced by Administration Service Delivery, which measures the ‘back office support’ function, accuracy and efficiency in processing media bookings and invoices.

Media agency criteria

The six criteria for the media agency survey (completed by media owners):

1. Knowledge of client brands and market landscape

2. Communication
3. Knowledge of the media landscape
4. Professionalism
5. Involvement

6. Administration and Buying

Authority is replaced by Administration and Buying.

Categories updated

• The Media Owner Television/Cinema category has been split into two separate categories.
• Media owners chose if they wanted to be listed in multiple categories, bearing in mind that to diversify across multiple categories dilutes the number of potential votes in each and they may benefit by sticking with the core brand identity.
• A new category has been introduced, Media Sales Consultancies, which includes individuals or companies that sell media space, not exclusively on behalf of only one media owner.
• The questionnaire rotates the categories randomly so that respondent fatigue does not skew the results.

Media Owner categories

• Media Owner of the Year

• Media Owner Lamb
• Media Owner Categories:

• Television

• Cinema
• Out of Home
• Radio
• Digital
• Newspapers

• Magazines

• Media Sales Consultancies

• Media Owners operating in Africa (South African based)

The Media Agency categories remain unchanged as follows:

• Media Agency of the Year
• Full Service Media Agency
• Specialist Media Agency
• Media Agency Lamb

• Media Agencies operating in Africa (South African based)

Africa Awards

In 2015, two new awards were introduced: the Most Africa Media Owner and Africa Media Agency Awards. Media companies can now choose if they wish to be listed in the Africa category. The scope of these awards is limited exclusively to South African based respondents working for South African companies, who have personally been actively involved in planning, buying or selling media space in African markets outside of South Africa in the last 12 months.

For more information, click here.