Important Dates

• Entry Period Opens: Thursday, June 6, 2024
• Entry Period Closes: Friday, July 26, 2024 at 5:00 PM (PT)
• CJ Excellence Awards Dinner and Ceremony: September 11, 2024

Steps to Submit

1. Click here to navigate to our entry portal.
2. Register or log in with a third-party verification.
3. Fill out your submission. (Note: You must have written consent if you are submitting on behalf of a client or including another company name(s) within your entry.)
4. Complete the online form and upload your entry(ies) and vector .eps or .ai logo file(s) for all companies named in your submission. 

Awards Categories 

Best Content or Creator Strategy
If you’ve launched a successful new content or content creator strategy in the past year, we want to hear about it. Did you run a campaign through the CJ Influence Team? Tell us about your results and what you accomplished. This award recognizes the advertisers and publishers who have successfully executed new or innovative content or content creator strategies.

Best Cross-Channel Strategy
For this award, judges will be seeking a strategy that showcases collaboration across multiple teams and channels leading to exceptional outcomes. Whether you utilized email, PR, social media, or other marketing channels to enhance your performance marketing program's growth, or vice versa, we want to hear about it. Tell us about your tools, partnerships, and strategies that amplified your efforts and delivered exceptional results.

Best Global Strategy
Are you leveraging the full global nature of the CJ network and the affiliate channel? Tell us how you are expanding into new global markets or using strategies to deepen your mark in existing global markets. We will recognize the most effective and well-executed global strategy or program.

Best Innovative Program Strategy
Smart marketers think outside the box for marketing innovation and look for new ways to harness data and technology. This award recognizes an advertiser or publisher who has demonstrated success and propelled the affiliate channel forward using new marketing formats or CJ solutions, data, and technologies. Tell us about your innovative campaign and the tools and partnerships that were essential to bring it to life.

Best Partner Diversification Strategy
Recruitment is the first step, followed by activation. Did you pull off a great campaign that accomplished both this year? How did you do it and what were the results? This award recognizes an advertiser or publisher with the best strategy for recruiting and growing new relationships.

The Collaboration Award
This award celebrates extraordinary collaboration that transcends conventional partnerships, showcasing innovative teamwork between multiple brands and/or publishers. Have you achieved outstanding success through a partnership that thinks outside the box, involving a combination of multiple brands and/or publishers? This award recognizes two or more clients whose collaborative efforts have led to a successful campaign or program strategy.

YOY Growth Awards
We will continue to grant the following awards on an overall year-over-year growth basis. No submission is needed to qualify:

• Advertiser of the Year - Large Enterprise & SME
• Agency of the Year
• Publisher of the Year
• CJ Leads Campaign of the Year
• CJ Influence Campaign of the Year

Entry Submission Questions

Each category will have you complete the following sections:

1. Summary/Sound Bite: Tell us why you should win this award. 2-3 sentences about your entry that we will use to announce the winner at the CJU Awards ceremony. (If selected we may need to incorporate minor edits to your soundbite to fit within our space allotted)
2. Clear Objectives: Evidence of well thought-out objectives and overall strategy for the campaign, service, or product. Please consider the SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) logic when outlining your objectives to provide context for the reader. Only include objectives that you reference in the other sections. 
3. Execution: Detail how the strategy was executed. What actions did teams take, which technologies were used, and how were challenges overcome to ensure the activity was a success? Consider how the execution was unique or innovative to help set your entry apart from the others. It is worth noting that the judges may not have a full understanding of your business or the activities, so avoid brand/CJ specific terminology or acronyms, or provide context where they are being used. 
4. Results: What material impact did the solution to the problem have on the business? Please support with data/metrics. You should tie your results back to your objectives to complete the story for the judging panel. Please support with data/metrics, benchmarking your metrics is also helpful for the judges to have context on the successes or impact.

Entry Tips, Tricks & Need-to-Know Info

• All submissions must reference activity that occurred only between June 1, 2023 - May 31, 2024. 
• Make sure you're preparing the right information relating to the category description for each section. 
• Each Section has a maximum word count of 350, except for the summary which should be short and succinct, with a maximum word count of 150. We recommend you are clear and informative, avoid buzzwords and provide context for judges may not have a full understanding of your business or the activities.
• For the objective and results sections, due to the word count limit, you can consider using bullet format for the specific measurable data points.
• All entries will need to be completed via our awards platform.
• Begin collecting evidence and developing a framework for your entry as early as possible. Strive to have your entry fully completed a couple of days prior to the deadline, allowing you ample time for review.
• Consider the sections of your entry as integral parts of a compelling narrative. Establish a clear connection between your results and the objectives you set, as well as the actions you took.
• If you are going to use acronyms, define them first! Although we all work together, some acronyms may differ from business to business. 
• Each submission will undergo a thorough evaluation by our panel of judges, who will assess the level of effort, creativity, results, and overall narrative. The score weighting of these criteria may vary depending on the category.
• The scores will be collected, reviewed, and discussed by groups of judges overseen by our marketing team. Following careful deliberation, a winner will be selected for each category, and if deemed suitable, a Highly Commended award may also be given.