First, our congratulations to Procter & Gamble’s FutureWorks Division and its partners, DeVries Public Relations and Summit Marketing, winners of the 2011 Ultimate Hub Prize — the “best of the best” in retail excellence and recipient of the Hub Cup — for Tide Dry Cleaners (PDF of Hub Prize special supplement).

It was a close call, with two other candidates — The Disney Store and U by Kotex — rounding out the top three. The Disney Store certainly deserves accolades for its hi-tech re-imagining of itself as “the best 30 minutes of a child’s day.” Kimberly-Clark and its agency, JWT/OgilvyAction, are equally praise-worthy for a daring initiative that turned keen insights into a remarkable point-of-difference at retail.

However, the very top honor went to a risky venture that mixed a relatively mundane product (laundry detergent) with a typically dreary retail category (dry cleaners). It’s almost hard to imagine how anything good could come of this, starting as it did from such a lowly place. But Procter took the, uh, gamble, and translated its powerful Tide brand into Tide Dry Cleaners, a franchise of retail outlets providing both wet- and dry-cleaning services.

As one of our judges put it: “P&G dug deep to understand consumers’ unspoken frustrations, barriers and desires around clean clothes. They leveraged the Tide brand equity, understood the consumer’s unmet needs, and were bold enough to venture outside of their current business model (from packaged-goods marketing to retail franchising). Because the execution is staying true to the insights, they’re now driving innovation within the dry-cleaning industry.”

Special congratulations as well to Kimberly Clark for a total of five Hub Prize medals (three gold, one silver, one bronze) and its agencies, JWT/OgilvyAction and Mass Hispanic. ConAgra Foods also cleaned up with a total of five Prizes (two gold, two silver and one bronze), along with its agencies, RPM Connect, Brandimage and Launch Creative.

Honoring Excellence at Retail

When we launched the Hub Prize in June, we really did not know what to expect. We knew there was a place for a competition dedicated to excellence in the retail experience that was, above all else, about making shopping better for shoppers. We also knew that achieving excellence at retail could mean different things to different people and assume many different forms.

Because of that, we cast a wide net and invited a free-for-all. We created a long list of types of retail experiences so that prospective applicants could see that there was a place for them in this competition. But we did not create “categories” per se, to help ensure that the best ideas would have a chance to go for the Gold, regardless of what type of retail they represented.

We approached the judging in a similar fashion, seeking out — and lining up — a spectrum of thought leaders and retail experts. These included academics, book authors, consultants, chief marketing officers, journalists and other assorted gurus — none of whom had a vested interest in the outcome but all of whom shared our vision of retail as a platform for innovation and competitive advantage.

The good news was that we received more entries than we expected — more than 80! The even better news was that we received so many interesting, high-quality applications from a broad cross-section of brands, retailers and their agencies. The quality was extraordinarily high.

Applicants were asked a series of seven questions related to the challenge they faced and the solution they created. What made it innovative, what was the insight and corresponding emotional connection? Most important, how did the initiative improve the retail experience, what were the results (financially and otherwise) and why did it deserve to win a Hub Prize?

For our judges, the eclectic assortment presented a classic apples-versus-oranges conundrum. Many of the entries were what one would classify as “shopper-marketing” campaigns, but we also had a good number of retail concepts and reinventions. Others were centered on apps, in-store media, database marketing, displays and even vending machines!

Each of our judges was assigned to one of five groups of roughly 16 applications each. Given the diverse nature of the entries, and that we were not awarding prizes on a category basis, the idea was to judge each entry on its own merits, and not necessarily relative to the other entries.

We asked our judges to evaluate, on a scale of 1-10, how well the candidates answered each of the seven questions; indicate whether they thought the initiative deserved consideration as the ultimate Hub Prize winner (the best of the best applications they had read); and offer any comments. Their mission was to imagine themselves as admissions officers at a top university, and look for a certain mix of excellence, originality, achievement and diversity.

The overall excellence of the entrants was evident in that 70 out of the more than 80 entries were deemed worthy of winning a Hub Prize by at least one judge. At the same time, our tough-but-fair panel of judges was just as unsparing in their critiques as they were effusive in their praise of the most-worthy entries.

Their evaluations determined a total of 36 Hub Prize winners: twelve Gold, Silver and Bronze winners. The top 12 — our Gold Medal winners — were then presented to our readers in a public vote to finalize the Ultimate Hub Prize winner, and the recipient of the coveted Hub Cup.

Procter & Gamble’s winning application — along with summaries of all of our Gold, Silver and Bronze Medal winners — is featured in a special, subscribers-only supplement to this issue of the Hub (a digital version is also available online at hubmagazine.com). The Hub Prize is a lot of work but a lot of fun — and a wonderful affirmation of the power of retail as a foundation for innovation and the driver of business growth. That’s what the Hub is all about. Can’t wait to see who enters — and wins — next year!

--