Last Call for Category Captains Entries

There's one day left to enter Progressive Grocer’s 19th annual Category Captains Awards competition, which recognizes overall excellence in innovative, creative, profit-generating category management platforms – efforts that help move retailers achieve genuine shopper centricity by delivering solutions, not just products.

PG will present its new slate of Category Captains and Category Advisors in its November 2015 issue, which will be devoted to showcasing overall excellence and continued achievement among next-generation category management leaders across the industry.

Deadline to enter is Sept. 1, 2015.

“Do you think you’re doing category management right?” asks Jim Dudlicek, PG editor-in-chief. “Think about how you’d answer some of the following questions.”

- What was the most important new shopper insight or innovation you brought to your retail customers last year?

- How did your new insight or innovation build total category volume, as opposed to solely your own brand/line(s)?

- What solutions are your efforts delivering to shoppers?

- What success models did you recommend to your customers in assortment, pricing and merchandising?

- Did your category program gain new accounts and expand existing ones?

- How did your platform invigorate a dormant or declining category?

- Did it leverage social media or mobile technologies in a new and creative way?

- How did your platform address the unique needs or issues of your retail customers?

- What are your retail partners saying about your category management efforts?

All Category Captain applicants will be evaluated against three requisite components: innovation to grow total category volume and deliver real shopper solutions; delivery of measured results; and direct performance feedback from retailers.

All winners will be notified by PG in mid-September 2015. Entries lacking all specified criteria will be disqualified.

Applicants can enter the contest via PG's online entry portal.

Nominees should keep the following criteria in mind:

Innovation: All entries must include an overview synopsis of 800 words or fewer, describing new category management initiatives your company/organization has employed over the past 12 months. The synopsis should include compelling examples of new programs, technologies, business systems, merchandising schemes and/or promotional tactics that played a key role in your category development initiatives to accomplish such crucial objectives as product differentiation in a specific supermarket category, increased sales for all products in the specified category and/or shopper-centric solutions that address key consumer need states.

Results/Overall Retail Performance: Submit supporting verifiable, comparable market-specific or account-specific sales or market share data that supports your claims about the effectiveness of your category management program/platform. This information can be kept confidential upon request and does not have to be published, but should be provided to assist with our evaluation.

Art/Graphics: Submit an electronic image of one or more of the products/programs mentioned in your synopsis. Images must be 300.dpi in resolution, in .tif or .jpg format; 4x4 preferable for size.

All entries are due by Sept. 1, 2015.

Questions can be directed to PG's editor-in-chief, Jim Dudlicek, at 224-632-8238 or [email protected].