What's New & Different for 2010

Eligibility Timeframe:

• Eligibility now extends from January 1 2009.  Nominations may cite achievements since that date.  Advertising, video, and other media issued since that date are eligible to be entered.  There is no eligibility timeframe for web site and blog entries - it doesn't matter when web sites and blogs were first published.

Entry Deadlines

There are four entry deadlines, including two early-bird deadlines by which the entry fees are substantially discounted:

• November 20 2009 : entry fees are discounted by as much as 40%
• December 18 2009: entry fees are discounted by as much as 25%
• March 31 2010
• April 30 2010: late entry deadline (late fees charged in addition to any entry fees)

New Categories:

• Executive of the Year - Non-Profit or Government
  
• Non-Profit or Government Organization of the Year
• 13 new Communications or PR Campaign/Program of the Year categories
• Best New Product or Service of the Year - Consumer Products

There are several changes to existing categories:

• Each of the Corporate Literature categories has been split into two categories, for online/electronic publications and print publications.
• Most of the Company / Organization categories have been split into three categories, for organizations with up to 100 employees, up to 2,500 employees, and more than 2,500 employees.  The ABAs have been honoring organizations based on these size distinctions for years, but now the distinctions are explicit.

Eliminated Categories:

• The Sales categories have been eliminated.  Sales professionals worldwide are recognized in the ABAs' sister competition, the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, which is currently accepting entries.

• In January 2010 the Stevie Awards will introduce an application on Facebook called My Work Accomplishments.  After installing the application on their Facebook page, the user will be able to log their work accomplishments, invite their friends and colleagues to comments on those accomplishments, publish that compilation of accomplishments and comments as a feed, and automatically submit that feed to The 2010 American Business Awards as a nomination.