The General Manager of the Leading Brands of Spain Forum, Miguel Otero, attended the AEMARK association’s Spanish Marketing Academic Conference , held in Las Palmas on 19 September. In the act he presented the diplomas to the winners of the fourth edition of the Branding Research Awards. These awards are jointly run by the Forum and the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (SPTO).

The first prize of 3,000 euros went to the paper La estrategia de marca para los nuevos productos: ¿extensión o alianza? (Branding strategy for new products. Extension or alliance? This paper was submitted by the lecturers Longinos Marín Rives and Salvador Ruiz de Maya.

There were also two runners up awards, each with a prize 600 euros. The first of these went to the papers El efecto ‘Made in’ en la percepción de un producto industrial español en los mercados internacionales (The ‘Made in’ effect of a Spanish industrial product in international markets) by the lecturers Rosa Maria Rodríguez Artola, Luis J. Callerisa Fiol, Miguel A. Moliner Tena, and Javier Sánchez García. The second went to the paper Instinto y Marca: contribución de la psicología evolucionista a la efectividad de la comunicación de la marca, (Instinct and Brand, the contribution of evolutionary psychology to the effectiveness of brands communication), submitted by the lecturers Vanessa Apaolaza Ibáñez, Patrick Hartman, and Patrick Vyncke.

This year, the panel of judges – made up of representatives from the Leading Brands of Spain Forum, the SPTO, the Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade and representatives from leading Spanish brands – emphasised the high standard of the seven papers presented with respect to those of previous years; some of them even included minor research on an international scale.

The panel of judges suggested that a new international research competition with a significantly higher prize should be proposed to the Board of the Leading Brands of Spain Forum Foundation. This would have the aim of promoting Spanish research into brands that are truly international in scope and be open not only to Spanish universities, but to universities and business schools abroad.

Ideally this new award should be granted during the year 2009 to coincide with the celebrations of the tenth anniversary of the Leading Brands of Spain Forum.