The Holmes Report has partnered with Proof to introduce a special awards category around making a clear connection between public relations and business value. The Business Value Awards is unique from other award competitions in that its jury is comprised exclusively of business leaders.

The inaugural competition will be judged by  two CEOs, a CFO, a general counsel, a sales leader, and a 'big four' partner who will evaluate entries among many criteria, outlined below, but ultimately it boils down to the way each initiative materially contributed to real financial performance.  

Here's more information:

Entry Deadlines:
Extended Deadline: January 11, 2016

Entry Fees:
$200 for Extended Deadline 

Entry Portal: (Please read the guidelines below before submitting)
Submit your entry here. 

The Jury: 
- Vijay Amritraj, CEO at FirstServe Entertainment
- Peter Bartolino, Chief Corporate Counselor at First Solar 
- Brad Jewett, CFO at OpenLink
- Chip Salyards, SVP Global Sales at ProntoForms
- Mark Stouse, CEO at Proof
Read Mark Stouse's column on the Business Value Awards. 
- Zoe Thompson, Partner at KPMG 

Entry Guidelines:

The guideline questions for the Business Value Creation award category represent the perspective of more than 100 business leaders. But they are guidelines — if you believe you have created Business Value for your company or client, and you express it in different terms, feel free to submit those to our judges. We realize that different businesses and different industries think about Business Value differently, and we are eager to understand what you are doing to create it!

Keeping in mind the judges have limited time, please limit entries to two pages for text-based documents or 10 slides for presentation decks. 

The following questions might help to guide your submission — but answering these is not the only criteria for submission. Ultimately, if you can show Business Value, we're interested. 

1. Describe the business KPI you were addressing with your campaign (for example, revenue, margin, cash flow, etc)

2. What was the primary market or customer issue that was impacting business performance? (Awareness, trust, confidence, etc)

3. Please elaborate on how you determined the answers to Questions 1 and 2.

4. How would you characterize the company’s product offering from the customer point of view (for instance: B2C – Low Risk, Impulse Purchase; B2C – High Risk, Considered Purchase; B2B – Low Risk, Commoditized Purchase; B2B – High Risk, Considered Purchase).

5. What PESO (Paid, Earned, Owned, Shared) assets did you decide to deploy to remedy or enhance business performance?  Did you concentrate your PESO assets at a particular point in the sales cycle, or did you distribute them?  If so, how and why did you do that?


6. Why did you select those assets?

7. What external market data did you measure or confirm the performance of those assets?  For example, Impression Count could be juxtaposed with a third-party Market Survey to confirm Awareness of the company, message or product.

8. What is the duration of the company’s typical sales process? (i.e. Less than 7 days; 8 days to 30 days; 31 days to 90 days; 91-days to 180 days; 181 days to 365 days; Longer than one year)

9. How did you convert Awareness into Net New Revenue Opportunity?

10. How many Marketing Qualified Leads converted to Net New Revenue within the typical period of the company’s sales process? How did you make that connection? 

11. What was your campaign’s impact on Deal Expansion as tracked and measured in a CRM or equivalent?  

12. What was your campaign’s impact on Sales Velocity, as tracked and measured in a CRM or equivalent?  Describe in detail with supporting data illustrating how you made the connection.

13. If your CEO or CFO asked you to explain how the company is able to monetize the company’s Brand Value outside of the balance sheet, how would you answer that question?

14. Have the company’s Marketing or Communications investments reduced the company’s Sales expense?  If so, please explain using data.

The Submission:
Please upload your submission via our entry portal. But please, be sure to follow the guidelines above. Your entry need not answer all of the questions posed above, but to maximize your chance for success, please try to address as many as possible. 

The Winners:
The winners will be announced at the In2 SABRE Awards to be held on February 16, 2016 at the Park Central Hotel in San Francisco.