Denmark’s leading marketing prize “HBH prize” awarded to Cruise Baltic

When enterprise is created in a network of competing businesses

Since 2006 2.3 million visits have been registered at Copenhagen Harbour, when tourists have visited the 19 destinations in the Cruise Baltic Project. It was a 6% increase compared to last year and this was due to Cruise Baltic’s strategic use of the marketing network. “Cruise Baltic is an example of how collaboration and networking by competing companies is the attraction and not just the company itself,” says Associate Professor Mogens Bjerre from CBS and member of the Board of HBH Fonden, in his account of this company being chosen as winner of Denmark’s leading marketing prize of DKK 75,000.

Co-optition

The network consists of other cruise companies, tour operators, tourist agencies, media and local cruise networks with Cruise Baltic as the pivotal point and thus includes a number of competing companies which collectively are of great value to the individual and to the whole. This phenomenon is called co-optition.

Collaboration is the attraction

“The individual company in and of itself is not enough to be attractive on the market. It is the collaboration that is the attraction. In addition continued growth with a platform of global acknowledgement and respect is the ambition of the network,” Associate Professor Mogens Bjerre says.

Apart from the HBH Prize HBH Fond also awards a prize of DKK 25,000 to the best paper written in the MSc program.

25,000 for paper on L’Oreal’s marketing measures

The prize this year goes to Nataliya Chichkova who, in her paper, analyses L’Oreal’s marketing measures in Denmark and in the Ukraine, on the basis of a discussion of the possibilities of standardizing the marketing and branding measures in these two countries.

“This is a very thorough paper, detailing literature on the subject and concluding that there is a need for a common standard with regard to “Branding Meaning” and “Branding Response” rather than “Branding Image”. This is quite in keeping with new research,” says Associate Professor Mogens Bjerre.

The CEO and founder of the HBH company, Henrik Bødtcher-Hansen is the man behind the HBH Marketing Prize. He started HBH A/S right after WWII, and with creative and modern marketing methods he made the name, HBH, famous in Denmark for the sale of quality electrical appliances.

In 1991 he founded the Henrik Bødtcher-Hansen Fund, which since then has been Denmark’s biggest marketing prize. The prize has been given to Trip-Trap, Troll Company, Østre Gasværk, ISO Supermarked, Charlotte Sparre, X-yachts and Aarstiderne A/S, Dansk Film and lastly, Hummel A/S.