2011 Winners

This Year's Design of the Times Winners Announced

Congratulations to everyone who participated in the 2011 Design of the Times Awards Competition. The entries in each of the eight retail channels — consumer electronic stores, convenience stories, drug stores, home centers/hardware stores, mass merchandisers, specialty stores, sporting goods stores and supermarket/grocery stores — have been judged and the winners have been chosen.

Here is a list of the gold, silver and bronze winners, plus the prestigious platinum awards and the coveted 'Best of the Times' honor. All of these in-store activations were on display in the Design of the Times Gallery at the Shopper Marketing Expo for thousands of brand marketers and retail executives to see and admire.

JUDGING

The first round of judging took place on Aug. 3, 2011 at the Target Corp. Headquarters in Minneapolis, MN. Hundreds of entries were evaluated on how well they met the 4C's of Effective In-Store Activation: Command attention; Connect with the shopper; Convey information; and Close the sale. Each entry was scored on a scale of 1-5 and finalists were chosen based on average points totals:

Gold 5.0 - 4.5
Silver 4.4 - 4.0
Bronze 3.9 - 3.5

The second round of judging was held Oct. 18, 2011 in the Design of the Times Gallery at the Shopper Marketing Expo. The finalist with the top average score in each retail channel received platinum status, and the highest overall score was awarded "Best of the Times" for 2011. Below is a list of these companies...