By Jim Dudlicek / NGA Managing Editor and Content Strategist
NGA’s Creative Choice Awards have long been a showcase for the innovation and ingenuity of independent grocers in their ability to engage their customers and the broader community.
To be sure, retailers over the years have excelled with their creative marketing and merchandising endeavors, leveraging the latest trends and technologies, paying attention to the way people shop, and course correcting as life tosses curve balls, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
As important as it is for grocers to keep up with the times, it’s essential that this awards program continues to reflect the realities of the current marketplace. That’s why this year’s Creative Choice Awards – for which the call for entries was announced last week – includes some updates and adjustments to its entry categories.
This year’s categories were outlined in the call for entries, with complete descriptions available online. But we wanted to offer some further insights into how the changes better reflect the world in which independent grocers do business.
- Digital Connections: Formerly known as Connections Through Omnichannel, this category now reflects marketing initiatives using strictly digital platforms.
- Innovations in Integrated Marketing: If you’re blending traditional platforms like print, TV/radio and outdoor with digital elements, this is the category for you, especially if you’re doing it in cool new ways, like with AI.
- Community Engagement: This category now includes seasonal campaigns.
- Multicultural Marketing: Communities are becoming more diverse across the country. How are you engaging these folks and how is your store a better reflection of the people who shop with you?
- Shopper Experience: The surge in online commerce since the pandemic has made it increasingly important for retailers to provide a seamless experience across their touchpoints. How do your in-store offerings and digital initiatives complement each other?
- Top Pick for Talent: What are you doing to convince the next-generation workforce that grocery retail is an attractive career option? Tell us what you’re doing to position grocery as a job that’s not just about selling, but about serving the community.
- Fresh Departments: To give more grocers a chance to be recognized, we’re breaking out fresh merchandising into its individual aisles, so we’re not pitting the butcher shop against the bakery if both are knocking it out of the park. Fresh categories now include dairy, bakery/deli/prepared foods/foodservice, meat/seafood and produce/floral.
- Likewise, we’re splitting the overall center store category into Center Store/Frozen and GM/HBC.
- Private Label/Store Brands: Private label has been growing for a while but seems to have taken steps two at a time since the pandemic. We want to see how you’re leveraging your store brand products for overall success.
We want to thank our sponsors Kellanova and Unilever for their continued support of the Creative Choice Awards. In addition to boosting the overall program, these companies will again support our two special-recognition categories that highlight prominent industry initiatives, with each holding significance for their respective sponsor:
- Kellanova’s ESG Excellence Award recognizes campaigns that focus on wellbeing, people, community and sustainability.
- Unilever’s People Positive Award honors initiatives that promote workplace diversity and inclusion.
The Creative Choice Awards are a reflection of the success of independent grocers and the evolving marketplace they serve. NGA will continue to evaluate, review and revise to ensure that continues to be true.
Don’t forget to enter! All completed entries are due by Friday, December 20, 2024.
Entries are being accepted now at our online entry portal.
