Benelux POD Awards 2006
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Awards were announced in the Chassé Theater in Breda (The Netherlands). An audience of 400 witnessed the famous Francesca Vanthielen presenting the Awards to winners from Belgium and Holland.

The yearly Benelux POD Awards-event is organized by the trademagazines Graficus (Holland) and Grafisch Nieuws (Belgium). They award POD-projects in two categories: Production and Promotion. This year the jury decided to also nominate four projects out of almost 60 entries for a new Award for POD Innovation.
The jury praised the high number of entries, but remarked: ‘At this moment in time, straight forward personalised calenders, labels and postcards are becoming almost commonplace.’ To raise standards the jury introduced new criteria, putting emphasis on the idea of ‘customers in charge’. Using POD as part of a multichannel-communication approach was also highly appreciated.

Production Winners
In ‘Production’, where the jury looks at the industrial use of POD, three winners were awarded. There was a Golden Award for Postbank, wich introduced the personalised bankcard into the Netherlands. People can now upload their own design for their plastic PIN-card, and in a short period of two months already 200.000 clients did.
Robeco Direct received a Silver Award for their ‘Capital Coaching’, offering some 80.000 clients on a regular basis personal advice on how to handle their financial portfolio to keep their investmentstrategies on track.
A Bronze Award went to Caterpillar, for taking the on demand and just in time production of complex manual-sets to a higher level.

Promotion Winners
The ‘Promotion’ category is a showcase for (self)promotional and often one-time-of POD-projects. Gold was awarded to Ovimex, for enabling it’s clients to compose their own edition of Ovimex’ magazine ‘D-tales’ according to their own favorite subjects, colours, etc. The Silver Award went to Mediactief for the multimedia-approach in producing a desktop-calender. Another calender, by Vanga Europe, received the Bronze Award for the original use of personal data.

Innovation
The jury decided that ‘uniqueness’ was key to winning the Innovation Award, and they decided unanimous that DI Jet was their winner. This Belgian firm produces ‘personalised textile’, and is having a big succes in selling their DI Bag-range of personal.

(Graficus & Grafisch Nieuws/Graphiques Nouvelles - March 2006)