Congratulations, you have won an Award!

I received this email this week.

“I do hope you are well??

As you know,?[xxxxxxxxx]?have been carefully considering nominations for the?annual?Corporate Social Responsibility Awards, and?I have to say, we have seen?some truly inspiring socially responsible businesses and initiatives take part.?

So from everyone here at?[xxxxxxxxx]?, please allow us to say a huge thank you for taking part.?

It gives me great pleasure to inform you that?Otnv has been successful?this year and has gone on to receive:?

?Best Training & Coaching Specialist Company - Suriname

?...in the?Corporate Social Responsibility Awards 2022!”

Reasons to celebrate? I am not sure. A few weeks ago, I received an email from this organization informing me that our company, OTNV , had been nominated for the 2022 Corporate Social Responsibility Award. This was not the first time I had received such an email; Over the years I’ve received ?several mails about awards I was nominated for and one time I was even curious enough to call the number provided for information. There was a very friendly lady on the other side of the line, explaining all these beautiful praises and great benefits to me after which she requested my credit card information to process the payment for my nomination. That’s where it hit me…..scam!

So back to this email about the award OTNV just “won”; the award for Best Training & Coaching Specialists”. I must confess, the title is pretty interesting, and even though I agree that we are among the best in Suriname, there were some things a bit off here.

First of all, this award is part of the Corporate Social Responsibility Program. While OTNV has a CSR program, I know there are enough other companies in Suriname with far more experience and effort ?in this field. Secondly, I am still not sure what criteria were used to decide which company in Suriname is the best training & coaching specialist. But the most important reason for me to think that something is off, again, is the fact that there is a price to be paid for the trophy. In this case, being nominated (I still don’t know by whom) was free, winning is free, but to receive the trophy and all the acclaims around it, there is small price tag of 780 US dollars. Of course, there are people who choose to pay, and they do receive this awards too, but what’s the real value of such an award if you have to pay to receive it?

So, what is it with all these awards?

A while ago I decided to do a little investigating and found some very interesting business models behind all these awards. Here are three I found which probably are the most used.

The scam

The scam is pretty easy to recognize, when a company or organization reaches out and tells you that you are nominated or you have won and you need to pay some kind of prize or fee, this is a scam. Yes, you may receive the trophy; it’s easy for the scammers to send you a 50 dollar trophy once you paid the USD 780 fee. Maybe I should call it a semi scam, since you do get (“buy”) an award at the end. There are many articles about these so called “vanity awards” including this one on AARP and this one by the US Better Business Bureau . My advice to you when receiving such an email: delete and run.

Awards by Event organizers

While this might not be the best header to describe these kind of awards, I cannot think of another, better suited one. For me these are the type of awards that are presented by smart event organizers who are able to secure a lot of sponsorship for giving some kind of fancy sounding award to people. A strong marketing strategy, a good line up of speakers (politicians most likely, as they fancy the opportunity to say something on any kind of stage) and some individuals who (seemingly) are very deserving for the awards. These kinds of awards can be a fat paycheck for the organizers, once they are able to secure enough sponsorship.

?Business services awards

Another business model is to give out awards to your customers. For me this seems like a legitimate way to give out awards, maybe even a smart marketing strategy. For example, if you are providing customer service training to companies, you could give out a big customer service award every year. This can be a trigger for clients or future clients to train their staff as well. I should definitely discuss this with my colleagues at OTNV and DOOR International . Maybe we can start something like an Accountability Award for the company with the best story about how our Accountability programs helped them grow and achieve big results.

Coming back to that email I received; will I accept the award and pay the USD 780 to receive it or should I just delete that email. Well, I choose the latter. I hope the guys at the office give me an award for that ??.