The Annual Golden Leaf Awards Program Continues to Recognize Tobacco Industry Excellence

Source from:  Tobacco Reporter  08/15/2013

The guys from BMJ want to see you in their stand, if you have a few minutes." This innocuous request, made during an industry exhibition almost 10 years ago, began a partnership between Indonesia-based paper manufacturer BMJ and  Tobacco Reporter, creating the industry's leading annual awards program, the Golden Leaf Awards.

It was November 2005, and BMJ was exhibiting at the TABINFO event in Kuala Lumpur. Of course, the entire Tobacco Reporter  staff was there in force—it was our show, after all. BMJ was an advertiser in  Tobacco Reporter  and a TABINFO exhibitor. So I headed over to its stand and sat down with Liem Khe Fung, Harris Titus and Christian Bachheimer, BMJ's CEO at the time.

That meeting provided a perfect example of what makes our industry unique. Here were three successful international businessmen—experienced, educated and well rounded—who were interested not only in increasing their own company's bottom line, but also in providing a benefit to the entire industry. Many of the men and women I've met during my 22 years in tobacco approach their business with the same "big picture" concept, and I think the industry is better because of it. Perhaps that "support the industry" way of thinking grows out of a shared sense of beleagueredness: Who can you count on for support if you won't support yourself?

And supporting the industry was exactly the concept BMJ wanted to explore in that meeting. The company was looking for a partner that could create and maintain an awards program to recognize and celebrate the good things being done in the name of tobacco, from research projects resulting in more environmentally friendly or economically efficient production to the social pro-grams that are ignored or even derided by the mainstream media.

I believe they pitched the idea to  Tobacco Reporter's competi-tors as well—at least, that's what I would have done in their place: put the idea out there and see who runs the farthest with it. I'm not much of a runner, but I can be creative at times. After TABINFO, we put our heads together and made a presentation to BMJ that they approved. We became the company's official and exclusive partner for the Golden Leaf Awards.

BMJ wanted its first awards to be presented at a trade show taking place in Bali the following year. This meant we had a short period of time to design the program, solicit judges, select appropriate trophies, gather entries, establish the rules and pull off an awards banquet—in less than a year's time and in a loca-tion more than 10,000 miles from our head office in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA.

No problem

The development of the program wasn't without hiccups. Soliciting entries that first year for an as-yet-unheard-of awards program was challenging. One prospective judge backed out at the last minute, and transporting five lead-crystal trophies with sharply pointed tips attracted plenty of scrutiny at various air-port checkpoints. As it turns out, lead crystal shows up on X-ray images as a menacing, solid dark shape. It was only four years after the Bali nightclub bombings, security must have reasoned, so surely I wasn't a nice middle-aged American woman attend-ing an awards banquet.

Yet, from these inauspicious beginnings, the Golden Leaf Awards have grown into a coveted symbol of quality,  innovation and hard work that scores of companies com-pete for annually. And it began when the management team at BMJ questioned why there was no program in place to  recognize excellence in the tobacco industry.

The various trophy categories were carefully created to acknowledge a wide range of accomplishments, from  customer service to newcomers to the industry. Each of the five categories represents opportunities for innovation and growth—practices that are common in our industry but aren't automatically associated with tobacco by outsiders. The care with which award categories were chosen must have been appropriate, as they have not been tweaked since their inception with the 2006 Golden Leaf Awards.

Since that first event, the Golden Leaf Awards have been presented in Paris (at TABEXPO 2007), Rio de Janeiro (during  Tobacco Reporter 's inaugural Global Tobacco Networking Forum, or GTNF, in 2008), Bangkok (TABINFO 2009), Bangalore (GTNF 2010), Prague (TABEXPO 2011) and Antwerp (GTNF 2012).

I have been honored to preside over the awards ceremo-nies every year, and my presentation skills have improved a bit each time! The 2013 Golden Leaf Awards will be handed out at the GTNF in Cape Town, South Africa, at the famous Mount Nelson Hotel. This year's proceedings will be led by Dayton H. Matlick, chairman of  Tobacco Reporter's parent company, SpecComm International. Needless to say, Tobacco Reporter  is proud that BMJ chose to work with us for the presentation of this  annual awards program. We look forward to a long and successful partnership! Enditem