About the Awards
This global initiative from The Internationalist celebrates case studies that represent marketing’s most significant calling– making a world of difference by actualizing the complex dynamics of purpose-driven strategies and the results they can deliver.
Today’s transparent social media environment has dramatically shifted the rules of “doing good business,” and marketing leaders throughout the world are evolving to address new challenges and opportunities. The assumption of responsibility, the authenticity of purpose and the adoption of greater transparency are now critical to how any brand or business plays its proper role in society.
Increasingly, we are seeing how individual brands and modern corporations use their scale and power of innovation to make a real difference to the world in new efforts to “do good” and even redefine concepts of “growth.”
Clearly, consumers want to live with more meaning—rather than just more—and to feel they are part of making a difference in an incredibly stressful, fast-changing world. Customer expectations of brands’ expanded responsibilities now range from advocating sustainability to ensuring jobs, from climate concerns to making a difference. Marketing is essential to connecting these issues with customers’ passions and values.
It’s Easy to Enter
We’re looking for inspiring, authentic, and well-aligned purposeful marketing programs that can indeed make a world of difference and drive growth. We understand that these efforts can be multi-faceted and complicated. But we’ve also seen that when well executed, business growth is a result, as is—literally— making a world of difference.
Just answer these 8 defining questions, and provide supporting links, images or video examples of the program
1. Outline the marketing situation to which the program responded.
2. Describe the critical insight or insights that became the foundation for the program.
3. How was marketing’s role central to this initiative?
4. Tell us about key tactics employed and why they may be considered pioneering.
5. How did the program positively impact the planet, its creatures, or people’s lives?
6. How did the program positively affect the attitudes toward the brand or change customer behavior– especially if discussing new sustainable or circular business models?
7. Discuss how the success of the project and how it was measured. For example, did it engender brand growth, impact the bottom line, or create a new business model?
8. Describe how this program may be a template for other markets or exemplify worldwide best practices.
Click Here For The Entry Form
Key Dates:
- June 16, 2025- Call for Entries Opens.
- July 18, 2025- Deadline for Entries.
- Early September 2025- Finalists will be announced.
- Virtual Awards Show to follow.
- Winners will also be interviewed as part of the Trendsetters or People Behind the Brands podcast series on iHeartRadio’s Spreaker and via video shows on Internationalist Marketing TV on YouTube. They will also be highlighted on the Internationalist Awards site, Internationalist Magazine, and LinkedIn.
- Case Study Winners will also be shared with ANA members and promoted through the ANA.
Qualifying Period:
Cases may be submitted for initiatives appearing in any market from Spring 2024 to the July 2025 awards deadline.
Entry Fees:
The entry fee is USD $495 for a single entry.
USD $445 for each entry when you have multiple entries.
Background:
MARKETING MAKES A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE™ launched a decade ago as a Think Tank event series when The Internationalist noticed a shift in the winners of its case study award programs. Those cases that did make a world of difference were consistently among the Grand Prix winners. Today, MARKETING MAKES A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE™ is a broad leadership initiative from The Internationalist, licensed by the ANA, that enables marketers to learn more about new marketing thinking that contributes to doing good, enhancing brand growth, and proving the value of marketing’s role in business.
MARKETING MAKES A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE™ was an idea source for the ANA’s Center for Brand Purpose in collaboration with The Internationalist. Deborah Malone authored the ANA’s Purpose Playbook series, and the first playbook on Discovering Brand Purpose, has been downloaded more than 25,000 times—the ANA’s most requested download. The Center for Brand Purpose won a President’s Award from the World Federation of Advertisers for its “outstanding contribution to the marketing industry.”
