The FINANCIAL — The National Credit Information Bureau (NCIB) has awarded the winner of the most innovative Web Marketing project. Mariam Talakhadze, the contestant whose page was the most rated, was named the winner.
Talakhadze received a 5,000 GEL reward from NCIB and a laptop computer presented by online shop Freeshop.ge. The five finalists of the competition were also awarded certificates.
Evaluation of the contestants depended on the number of visitors to their webpage, which was controlled daily by a contest administrator and accurately counted by the counting system. A public favourite was also selected. The rating of each website was counted by a specially developed formula: CP=((AUV*0.3)+(PGV*0.7))/(AUV+PGV))*UV. CP – Contest Point, AUV – Absolute Unique Visitors, PGV – Pageviews, UV – Unique Views.
The FINANCIAL, the General media sponsor of the contest, gave free online advertising space to the winning lobbyist company Campa.
“We believe that developing online marketing and e-commerce can play a key role in developing Georgian business. Due to this fact we will keep supporting such projects in the future,” commented Lali Javakhia, Head of the Marketing Department of The FINANCIAL.
“CIB with the support of The FINANCIAL decided to carry out an unprecedented, innovative and largest-scale competition which was held over 3 months. Anyone could take part in this project by visiting our website www.contest.ncib.ge and filling in the application form by June 10. As for criteria, first of all participants had to choose one company and write a strategy on how to promote it online and then send us the written strategy for review,” said Diana Velengurskaia, PR Manager at NCIB.
“The lobbyist companies that took part in the project included Borjomi, Bcredit, Gmart and Campa. Out of 400 contestants the top 5 finalists entered the second stage. They were doing their best to implement successful PR campaigns online,” Velengurskaia said.
“Not only applicants interested in web marketing joined the project, but also thousands of supporters of the participating companies and their employees. Participating companies received new ideas and strategies about how to better carry out effective web marketing and increase brand awareness,” Velengurskaia said.
The contestants had an opportunity to take part in developing a web marketing branch of the companies.
“Participants had the chance to become virtual web marketing manager of their preferred company, offer the companies new ideas, a new strategy and in the case of participating in the second round, carry out PR of the lobbyist company via the internet. Each competitor was given a special web server for carrying out PR of the lobbyist company and implementing their ideas for 6 weeks. Most of them had quite interesting strategies and the websites were really interesting to see. In order to make the websites more attractive they even held some special competitions where the winner received prizes from the company,” Velengurskaia said.
“When I first received information about the competition I decided to take part immediately. This is my sphere, my profession and I decided to test my strength. This competition has appeared to be a big success for me. It was a big exam and the competition was a kind of a challenge for everyone who is interested in the web marketing sphere. I am very happy that I became the winner and it’s a huge achievement for me,” Mariam Talakhadze said.
“Company Campa was my lobbyist company and I created a strategy in the direction of developing this company in web marketing. The jury appreciated my project and that’s how I was moved to the final stage of the competition. I really had a hope that I would become a winner and win the main prize, but I didn’t think that I would receive an award from the public as well. I was very happy that I received both rewards,” Talakhadze said.
The awarding ceremony was held in “Bowling Central”, where a mini-tournament in bowling between the winners and the company representatives was held. The sponsors of the project were Tbilmicrocredit, G-Mart, Radio Commersant, B Credit and Bowling Central.
“Such a successful web marketing competition hasn’t been held in Georgia before. This is the most innovate competition. Over a period of 3 months, companies’ businesses were promoted in web space with new informational technologies, which is a really interesting step for each of the companies. Mariam Talakhadze, winner of this contest did her best and worked hard in order to become winner of the project. Over 3 months she had many interesting projects and she was one of the best and most professional in developing the web marketing sphere,” said Eka Galdava, Project Manager of NCIB.
“Information technology is a very important sphere. It’s a future technology so these kinds of projects and taking part in them is a big step forward for the company itself and for the contestants as well,” Galdava said.
Discussion about this post