The Society for New Communications Research of The Conference Board (SNCR) opened its call for entries for the 2018 Excellence in New Communications Awards, including a call for case studies that utilize digital or social media to advance social good. Entrants are asked to detail their initiatives, technologies used, and success metrics. Submit your case studies at www.conference-board.org/sncrawards2018. 

This prestigious Excellence in New Communications Awards program honors the work of corporations, nonprofits, governmental organizations, educational institutions, media organizations, and individuals who are advancing the use of digital and social media, mobile media, collaborative technologies, virtual reality, and other emerging digital technologies to improve business, media, health, law, culture, and society.

Award divisions and categories

Awards will be granted across six divisions—Academic, Corporate, Government, Media, Nonprofit/NGO, and Technology Innovation—and in six categories:

• Innovation in Digital Experience
  Category includes, for example, social marketing projects and projects utilizing augmented reality, virtual reality, digital retail, or internet of things, as well as projects to reach new audiences/younger generations. This can include startup projects and experiments to chart the future.
• Communications, Communities and Collaboration
  Category includes internal or external projects using social media and online community platforms for customer or employee communities, developer communities, corporate intranets, or other online engagement initiatives.
• Multi-Platform Communications
  Category includes integrated communications and campaigns to reach unplugged audiences and new devices, for example, screens in cars. Entrants will be judged on, among other things, planning and analytics across platforms.
• Social Data for Customer Experience and Operational Efficiency
  Category includes application and use of social data for improved communications, customer insights, customer experience improvement, R&D, innovation.
• Storytelling
  Category includes both text-based and visual media (photos, videos, graphics). Entrants will be judged on, among other things, ability to construct and disseminate a narrative.
• Digital Authenticity and Reputation Management
  Category includes efforts to authenticate digital communications and media, and improve digital thought leadership. Entrants will be judged on, among other things, efforts to improve media literacy among employees and the general public.

Judging criteria

The Excellence in New Communications Awards honor projects that are successful at achieving business goals. For this reason, judges will reward entries that display the following characteristics (as well as excellence in implementation within their category):

1. Measurable business impact
2. Effective use of other program performance metrics
3. Contribution to achieving business/organizational goals (this includes, for relevant projects, achieving social good)
4. Integration of digital and traditional platforms
5. Efforts to overcome obstacles and take advantage of opportunities
6. Recognition of lessons learned