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All submissions for the 2026 ABA Marketing Excellence Awards must be completed by Thursday, July 23, 2026.

Bank marketers produce strategic, thoughtful and dynamic campaigns that shape our industry every day. To better recognize these accomplishments and align with the evolving goals of bank marketing teams, ABA is retiring the Brand Slam awards and introducing the ABA Marketing Excellence Awards.

Visit the ABA Marketing Excellence Awards page for important details about the awards. You can also stay up to date throughout the year with the ABA Banking Journal.

When you are ready to submit your marketing materials, select “Enter Here” to begin the entry process.

Categories

  • Brand Awareness
  • Product Launch
  • Digital Acquisition
  • Employee Engagement
  • Customer Adoption and Loyalty

Submission Requirements

  • Campaigns launched between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026, are eligible.
  • A description of the campaign’s goals and results must accompany each entry.
  • Video and audio submissions must be 5 minutes or less.
  • A maximum of 25 files may be uploaded per entry.

Judging

Each category will be judged using the following criteria:

  • Concept: Is the campaign concept creative, different and relevant? How well does it tie to the brand and target audience? For integrated programs, is there cohesion and continuity across the campaign?
  • Strategy: Does the campaign address and solve a business or marketing challenge? How well does the campaign use research, demographic targets, technologies and end-user insights?
  • Creativity: Relative to the award category and target audience, how engaging, influential and distinct is the campaign?
  • Execution: Is the campaign seamless, smart and measurable?
  • Impact/Results: Did the campaign achieve its objectives and goals? How did consumers receive the campaign, and what qualitative and quantitative data was gathered?

Winners

ABA will recognize Marketing Excellence Award winners at the ABA Bank Marketing Conference in Austin, September 23-25, 2026.

Acceptable File Types

  • Video: MPEG, MPG, MP4, MOV, AVI, WMV, M4V
  • Audio: MP3, WMA, WAV
  • Images: PNG, JPG, JPEG, GIF, TIF, TIFF
  • Documents: PDF, PS, DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPS, PPTX, XLS, XLSX, RTF

View the complete ABA Marketing Excellence Awards rules