The Direct Marketing Association designed a new integrated campaign that is resonating with ECHO Award entrants

By: Lara Jensen

Even competitions have competition. And for the Direct Marketing Association, sponsors of the popular International ECHO Awards, the challenge to break through the clutter created by other direct marketing awards programs has prompted the DMA to develop some winning campaigns in its own right.

As a result, the efforts have added even more sizzle in recent years to the group’s call-for-entry formula, says Barbara Parker, director of the ECHO competition.

Since the DMA decided a few years ago to increase promotion for the awards program, the creative agencies that the DMA has called upon to create the ECHO call-for-entry campaigns have been “given a lot of freedom to do things they couldn’t do with other clients,” Parker says. The reason is simple: Since the awards recognize creativity, it reflects well on the ECHO brand if the call-for-entry campaign is itself innovative.

The only real direction the agencies receive is that the effort should reach client, agency and creative people in the direct marketing field around the world and encourage them to become part the ECHO awards, which began in 1929 as a “Best in Direct Mail” contest.

The campaign typically consists of mail to 30,000 names, some e-mail, a Web site, and advertising in a number of trade magazines. Last year, a record-breaking 1,124 direct marketing campaigns vied for ECHO honors, including 650 entries in five new categories: e-mail and instant messaging, mobile, search engine marketing, Web advertising, and Web development. The DMA expects the number of entries to be even higher this year and attributes the increase to the call-for-entry campaign.

Direct marketing agency MRM Gillespie developed this year’s program, which rolled out in October and was built around the idea that the awards serve as a test, or “ECHO cardiogram,” of the health of one’s career. “By leveraging the ECHO name in ‘ECHO cardiogram,’ it was our way of validating a creative process that traditionally can’t be validated,” says Richard Eber, chief creativity officer at MRM Gillespie.