May 8, 2009

Last week during the BMMA Annual Meeting in Clearwater Beach,the Broadband Multimedia Marketing Association announced the winners of their 2008 BMMA Best-in-Class Marketing Awards.  

View press release

There are 2 distinct categories of awards. The Marketing Excellence Award is presented to the top one or two persons or groups that best display excellence in the field of marketing as it relates to execution (Vendor or Service Provider). This award may be granted for excellent execution in the area of promotional activity, advertising, new product introductions or for overall excellent execution of a total marketing campaign. All areas of marketing are also eligible for this award. The Marketing Innovation (Trailblazer) Award goes to the person or group that best displays innovation in marketing theory, practice or operations with all areas of Marketing being eligible. (Both a Service Provider Marketing Trailblazer Award and a Vendor Marketing Trailblazer Award are presented.)

This year’s BMMA Best-in-Class Award winners are:

1] Marketing Excellence Awards

This year the BMMA Board chose two Marketing Excellence Award winners for their excellence in execution of the following marketing programs.    

A. Vendor Winner

Shana Nardecchia accepts their BMMA Marketing Excellence award. 

Alcatel-Lucent - Mover Market Program

Shana Nardecchia – This program provided incentives to ALU’s customers' service reps to encourage them to transfer calls (from customers who are in the process of moving) to the mover channel. 

ALU demonstrated excellence in the execution of this program. They first conducted market research to understand the end-user market that their customers deal with. They then listened to their customers and determined what problems they were encountering in serving this market. ALU then developed and implemented a plan to help their customers be more successful in dealing with the end users in this market.

B. Service Provider Winner

Brian Farley accepts their BMMA Marketing Excellence award. 

MTS Allstream - ZoneAlarm^® ForceField™

Consumer Internet Product Marketing – This program introduced an additional layer of security – ZoneAlarm’s ForceField™ service, to MTS Allstream Internet customers at no additional cost. ForceField™ protects the user’s online browsing session by creating a temporary clone of the browser so that anything customers do on the web runs in a protected shell.

MTS continues to bring great value to their market with a leading edge approach. The ability to understand their market and develop and execute the right plans for success is evident. MTS examined their customers to determine the right target market, identified the market needs, found a product to meet those needs and developed an advertising program to highlight their solution. They also overcame the market’s unfamiliarity with this new type of product by creating exceptionally depictive marketing material that communicated the idea of ForceField with a unique holographic ad mailer and other integrated collateral. Well done!

2] Marketing Innovation Awards

A. Vendor Winner  

Actiontec Electronics- Next Gen Wireless Broadband Router

Michael Gondar accepts their BMMA Marketing Innovation award.

Brian Henrichs – As the industry's first "Smart Home Gateway", Actiontec's Next Gen Wireless Broadband Router is the first device to feature a dual-core, 64-bit processor that allows it to support home networking speeds up to 1 Gbps and enables broadband TV  and other content to be distributed to multiple devices in the home over coaxial cable. By bundling fiber-optic Internet and fiber-optic TV - along with a broad range of connectivity options (wireless, Ethernet, coax) - into a single box, the device offers a seamless entertainment and communication experience throughout all parts of the home network.

Actiontec’s new router is truly innovative.  Actiontec did an excellent job of evaluating the market needs and trends to develop a product that can act as the heart of the next-generation FTTH, FTTC or FTTx digital home by facilitating multiple high-throughput media streams between devices along with highly desired customer features and service provider management tools like QoS control, etc.  Actiontec did it right by having their product marketing, development, and channel sales teams partner with Verizon and other broadband providers to ensure the CPE device met all carrier specifications and application needs.  By listening to carrier needs, Actiontec brought a new class of CPE product to market that directly addresses current and future broadband initiatives.

B. Service Provider Winner

  John Walsh accepts their BMMA Marketing Innovation award. 

Bell Aliant – PC Expert

Julie Todd & Jeff Hovell – This program introduced a new type of support services from Telco Service Providers – IT support for the small business customer.  PC Expert proactively and remotely monitors/manages customer owned PC's, laptops, and tablets and acts when an issue is detected. Issues may range from a performance issue to an outright failure of equipment. When an issue is detected, Aliant will remotely connect to the affected device to diagnose and attempt to resolve the issue. If that is not possible, a technician may be dispatched to the customer site to remedy the issue.

Bell Aliant identified a market need, determined that customers did not have other acceptable options and designed an innovative new product to meet the customers needs and that had features desired by customers but not available elsewhere.  They also strategically designed the product to advance Bell Aliant’s competitive position in the market for their broadband services and other Small Business services.  Aliant then conducted both an internal launch/ kick off event in all of their channels as well as an integrated targeted and mass external campaign. They then launched a significant PR campaign to announce that Aliant is the only ICT company providing IT and PC Support to SMB customers.   This allowed them to demonstrate leading edge innovation in the marketplace.