The annual MOST Awards, hosted annually by Wag the Dog Publishers, are branching out into Africa and launching two new awards. In line with its established format, The MOST Africa Award will firstly recognise and rank South African based media that plan and buy media in Africa. It will also rank and recognise South African based media owners that sell media in Africa.
The MOST Awards is an independent web-based survey commissioned by Wag the Dog Publishers and conducted by Freshly Ground Insights (FGI) to help media agencies and media owners assess and improve service delivery to their clients and media owner and media agency partners. In the survey six criteria are ranked in order of importance and used weighting factors for the rating scores submitted by respondents.
Media owners with Africa sales teams are to be rated on their knowledge of their own brands, their knowledge of client brands and market landscape, their service delivery their ability to innovate, their ability to authorise deals as well as their passion for and involvement in their brand.
Media agencies working in Africa will be rated by media owners on their knowledge of the media landscape, knowledge of client brands and the market landscape, their ability to communicate, their professionalism, their ability the make decisions for the client as well as their involvement and interest in their clients’ brands.
Sandra Gordon, CEO and founder of Wag The Dog Publishers, says the move to create a new category for the rest of the African continent was a natural one.
“South African media agencies are doing an increasing amount of business with media owners that serve the rest of Africa and it was time that we paid attention to this sector,” she says. “Africa internationally is internationally viewed as a major growth opportunity with the media industry feeding off this trend. We are looking mainly at broadcast, outdoor and electronic media owners with about 45 media agencies servicing them. We are anticipating a good response to the survey which will show which are the leaders in this new category”.
Brad Aigner, managing director of FGI, says the addition of the Africa category is an interesting one. “Our experience with previous MOST AWARDS is that you need to ensure high levels of participation in the survey so that you ensure that the sample is representative of the media industry. We hope agencies and media owners alike in this new category will participate in the MOST Awards which have become an industry benchmark for the media industry.
Last year, prior to the Africa category being added to the MOST Awards, FGI exceeded its voting target of 6 000 votes for the 102 media agencies that participated as well as 110 media owner sales teams respectively. The survey method and data analytics were reviewed the analytics department at the University of Pretoria and given a clean audit, says Aigner.
Gordon believes the MOST awards serve to encourage exceptional standards within the media industry and to spotlight areas of excellence as well as those that could be improved. “As the South African media industry expands its reach into Africa, it will be good to know the Most Awards will grow its influence for good service along with it.”
