EXHIBITOR Magazine's 14th Annual Sizzle Awards

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sizzle awards

	2011 SIZZLE AWARDS JUDGES
	Nancy Tharp, executive creative director, The Promotion Network, Dallas Jim Dawson, president, Dawson Marketing Group, Southlake, TX Mike Guillory, manager of worldwide brand and communications, Texas Instruments Inc., Dallas Susan Shuttleworth, director of corporate marketing communications, TransCore, Carrollton, TX David Young, vice president of client services, Slingshot, Dallas

A one-off product, to-die-for exhibit design, and spot-on booth space are all well and good. But if you don't have an effective promotional strategy to go with them, your chances of exhibit-marketing success rival the U.S. government's chances of ever being completely debt free. After all, if you don't promote your exhibit - through direct mail, social-media tactics, in-booth activities, etc. - there's little reason for attendees to wander into your space, no matter how attractive your other exhibit elements might be.

So to honor the powerful role promotions play in exhibit-marketing success - and to provide readers with killer ideas to heat up their own programs - EXHIBITOR hosts its Sizzle Awards competition, and devotes its entire October issue to the winners. The annual awards competition honors exhibit-promotion strategies that aren't just hot, they also deliver cold-hard results.

This year's judges - five marketing experts from a variety of disciplines - gathered in June to peruse entries in nine categories. While temperatures soared, jurors analyzed the entries with two overarching criteria in mind. Winners had to: a) rival Gaga's inventive genius, and b) generate enough results to make even master-class exhibit and event marketers take notice.

By day's end, judges had identified five winners, which not only devised cutting-edge concepts - including everything from a board-game-inspired exhibit to a series of in-booth activities that lured attendees out of their comfort zones - they also reeled in rock-solid results. One winner doubled its Twitter following, another scored a 196-percent lead increase, and still another bagged more than $750,000 in show-related revenue.

Please join us in congratulating our newest crop of Sizzle Award winners. May their piping-hot promotions ignite the smoldering fires of innovation in your own exhibit-marketing program.

THE WINNERS click images for articles