Event Awards

We have just added two new live event awards categories in The 2012 International Business Awards, the world's premier business awards competition to help you showcase your organization's successes. (The extended entry deadline for the 2012 IBAs is 18 July; you can request your entry kit here.)

Our newly added live event award categories include:

• Best Public Service/Public Affairs Event
• Best Public Relations Event

Our other event awards categories include:

• Best Consumer Event (e.g. auto show, boat show, health & fitness expo, etc.)
• Best Tradeshow or Convention
• Best Association Event or Meeting
• Best Corporate Image Event
• Best New Product Introduction Event
• Best Internal Recognition/Motivational Event
• Best Sales Meeting
• Best Sales Presentation

Your event of the year submissions should include the following information:

• An essay of up to 500 words describing the event: its genesis, goals, development, and results. You may include detailed production notes, audience demographics, etc.
• Any number of supporting files and web addresses that you may upload to our server to support your entry and provide more background information to the judges. These may include video clips, photographs, press reviews, news articles, and so on.
• Optionally, you may list creative and production credits for your event - a list of the people and organizations that contributed to its development

The 8th Annual International Business Awards were presented in October 2011 in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates. Best event honorees included GLOBAL EVENTS ID Corporation SL, GSMA, Abu Dhabi Airports Company, Jack Morton Worldwide, Turk Telekom, and Opus, among others. 2012 honorees will be celebrated at the 9th annual awards banquet on Monday, 15 October in Seoul, South Korea.

How will our new corporate awards categories help you highlight your organization?

Turk Telekom of Istanbul, Turkey won a Stevie® Award for Best Internal Recognition/Motivational Event in the live event awards categories of The 2011 International Business Awards, the world's premier business awards program. (The 2012 IBAs are now accepting entries. Download your entry kit here and begin submitting entries by the 16 May entry deadline.) Here we look at the how Turk Telekom strengthened their management team's leadership through their event of the year.

The 2011 event awards winner is a leading communication and convergence technology group in Turkey which provides its customers with integrated telecommunication services from PSTN and GSM to broadband internet. With nearly 30,000 employees all over Turkey, the organization was challenged to motivate their leadership when the company transitioned from being a public company to being a private company. To help ease the transition, Telekom's internal communications department organized an internal motivation event. Hosted at Turkey’s tropical Mediterranean paradise, Antalya, the event focused on ‘game playing’ to foster high level team building and strengthen leadership.

The key communications objectives were to:

1. Bond the managers from all 81 cities in Turkey as a team in and of itself,
2. Create a family feeling, like a big team,
3. Stimulate enthusiasm for the new company structure, and
4. Foster harmony amongst various departmental managers and geographies.

To meet the communications objectives, the best event award winner's internal communications team created a series of “games” lasting over the 3 day event. The highlights included:

1. Turkey’s Biggest Stage:
   An impressive 480 square meter was constructed as the centerpiece of the event, mimicking a game board. The participants themselves would become the “pattern” at certain times, which were the “stuff” of compelling photo opportunities.
2. Smart Street:
   A lounge area was built where participants could interact with state-of-the-art communications and entertainment products under development.
3. Games Arena:  
   A lively place where managers could play an amazing variety of games – traditional and new - in pairs or teams, such as table tennis, bowling, backgammon, soccer, basketball, go karts, PS3, WII, Xbox Kinetic, ginger, zorp ball, IQ Cup and more. There was even a caricaturist who drew humorous pictures of the managers. There were various workshops and activity areas where participants could interact, develop skills through game playing.
4. Strategy Sessions:  
   Several sessions were conducted in which managers presented strategic objectives and how to bring the key message to life: “People make companies, people are our biggest asset.” In workshops, executives shared tools and techniques about how to strengthen leadership. In soft skill sessions between workshops, participants engaged in entertaining hands-on activities, role-playing, and anonymous ideation pursuits to discover ways to communicate more effectively.
5. Entertainment:
   Weaving the “Games People Play” mood throughout the sessions, there were performances on the main stage by popular Turkish singers and stand up comics.
6. Branding:
   There was no shortage of motivating signage and accessories to keep the theme alive: new logo “We exist to add value to life,” luggage tags, bus signs, welcome and farewell banners, desk flags, name tags, flyers, field flags, T-shirts, pens, shirts, and more. These were displayed at the airport for the majority who traveled from Turkey’s 81 cities, in the hotels where they stayed, and at the venue reception areas, activity rooms, stages and fields.

Telekom executives disclosed top marks for content, value, accommodation, and team spirit from the attendees in a post event survey.

About Turk Telekom
Türk Telekom Group is a leading communication and convergence technology group in Turkey which provides integrated telecommunication services including PSTN and GSM to broadband internet. Turk Telekom has nearly 30,000 employees all over Turkey. Türk Telekom group companies have 16 mn Fixed Access Lines, 6.7 mn ADSL Connections and 11.6 mn Mobile Subscribers. To learn more information, visit www.turktelekom.com.

There are 8 live event awards categories in The 2012 International Business Awards, the world's premier business awards competition, to help you showcase your organization's successes. (All organizations and individuals worldwide may submit nominations to the IBAs. The entry deadline is 16 May; request your entry kit here.) Our categories recognize excellence in live events staged since January 1 2011.

Our event awards categories include:

• Best Consumer Event (e.g. auto show, boat show, health & fitness expo, etc.)
• Best Tradeshow or Convention
• Best Association Event or Meeting
• Best Corporate Image Event
• Best New Product Introduction Event
• Best Internal Recognition/Motivational Event
• Best Sales Meeting
• Best Sales Presentation

Your event of the year submissions should include:

• An essay of up to 500 words describing the event: its genesis, goals, development, and results. You may include detailed production notes, audience demographics, etc.
• Any number of supporting files and web addresses that you may upload to our server to support your entry and provide more background information to the judges. These may include video clips, photographs, press reviews, news articles, and so on.
• Optionally, you may list creative and production credits for your event - a list of the people and organizations that contributed to its development

The 8th Annual International Business Awards were presented in October 2011 in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates. Best event honorees included GLOBAL EVENTS ID Corporation SL, GSMA, Abu Dhabi Airports Company, Jack Morton Worldwide, Turk Telekom, and Opus, among others. 2012 honorees will be celebrated at the 9th annual awards banquet on Monday, 15 October in Seoul, South Korea.

How will our international corporate awards categories help you highlight your organization?

Portugal Telecom won a Stevie Award for Best Internal Recognition/Motivational Event in the Live Event awards categories of The 7th Annual International Business Awards. Read the full-text of their winning entry.

Portugal Telecom (PT) held a hugely successful Christmas party for all their employees on December 18, 2009—for the second consecutive year—which was an auspicious way both to end the year and to start the new cycle for 2010. Here we look at how they organized this mega-event.

PT’s main objectives for organizing such a massive party—it was held in FIL, Lisbon’s futuristic International Fair halls in the Parque das Nações, and attended by just under 9,000 people­—were to bring as many of their employees together as possible, to make them all feel a part of the PT team, to celebrate the year’s successes, and, of course, to celebrate the spirit of the holidays.

The logistics of organizing such an event were awe-inspiring.  Following the success of the 2008 Christmas party, it was likely that even more of the 8,500 PT employees would want to attend the 2009 event; and PT had a formidable task to meet and surpass the high expectations raised by the 2008 party.

Christmas for People with Fiber
The theme for the event was Christmas for People with Fiber (as in fiber-optic technology) and the space was to be decorated to reflect this theme.  PT first had to find a space large enough to hold up to 9,000 people; that would allow for them all to sit down to eat; and that would provide space for the entertainment afterwards, a post-dinner show with a medley of Portuguese music. 

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