The Neptune Awards, now in its 13th year, annually honors excellence in marine industry marketing. MRAA won a 2020 Neptune Award in the category “Best Event Marketing/Grassroots Promotion” for its Dealer Week “Lunch and Learn” promotion.
The promotion was a collaboration with online solution provider OperateBeyond. In order to promote attendance and collaboration at Dealer Week, OperateBeyond offered to buy teams lunch — in the form of a $100 gift card that was delivered in a branded Dealer Week/OperateBeyond pizza box.
“We loved working with OperateBeyond on the Lunch and Learn promotion,” said Allison Gruhn, MRAA’s Director of Business Development. “In a year without in-person marketing opportunities, they knew they wanted to get creative, and the result was a fun campaign that was a win for everyone involved.”
Dealers were so delighted with the gift when it arrived, many posted photos on social media. The promotion also helped drive Dealer Week to record attendance of 1,047 dealership personnel.
Neptune Award judges wrote: “Love the idea of the lunch gift card and sending it in a pizza box was a great idea to make it social media worthy. Very engaging. Innovative idea to encourage teams to register for MRAA Dealer Week. Plus, it’s a fun way to promote sign ups.”
MRAA’s annual goal with Dealer Week is to innovate in order to provide attendees the best possible experience each year. In 2020, that approach was particularly difficult but absolutely required. As a result, the MRAA team is especially honored to be recognized in this particular year.
“We had great feedback on our first online Dealer Week, and one of the things people liked was the ability to attend with more of their team,” said Mike Davin, MRAA Brand Director. “We’re glad to be recognized for the Lunch and Learn campaign because we enjoyed creating something outside the box, but also because it promoted a great team-based learning opportunity.”
The entire list of 2020 Neptune Award winners is available at marinemarketersofamerica.org.
