Promotion Awards 2026: Advice Group Takes Home 4 Trophies, Including the Jury's "Best in Show" Special Award!

On May 13, the iconic Officine del Volo in Milan hosted the gala evening for the 20th edition of the Promotion Awards, Italy’s premier event for relationship marketing, organized by Promotion Magazine.
In a landmark edition celebrating two decades of excellence in the loyalty and engagement industry, Advice Group swept 4 awards across three innovative behavioral loyalty and engagement projects in the Beauty, Sport, and Energy sectors.

Verabilia Wins Shopper Marketing & Brand Activation and Takes Home "Best in Show"!

The Verabilia loyalty program, developed for Veralab in strategic partnership with EY Studio+, won the Shopper Marketing & Brand Activation category and earned the prestigious title of Best in Show 2026. This special jury award is bestowed upon the single project that achieved the highest overall score across all entries.

Verabilia serves as an innovative case study in the beauty and e-commerce space, redefining how brands build customer relationships through a proprietary Walled Garden. The brand set out to guide its community away from social media platforms and into a secure, owned digital environment, successfully turning anonymous followers into fully known profiles to engage with over time. Built on the pillars of data ownership and mutual trust, Verabilia enables the brand to cultivate direct, value-driven, and personalized connections with its audience.

Unlike traditional loyalty programs that rely heavily on point-to-cost ratios and transactional RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) metrics, Verabilia introduces:

• Behavioral Mapping: Continuous tracking of qualitative interactions within Verabilia’s "total pink world."
• Business Intelligence: Leverages community engagement as a strategic asset to power targeted, data-driven marketing initiatives.
• Database Clustering: Uses custom badges to segment the customer base, enabling communications triggered by real-world user behaviors.

Vivo Azzurro Fan Claims Victory in the Data-Driven Category

Vivo Azzurro Fan, the fan engagement portal created for the FIGC (Italian Football Federation), took top honors in the Data-driven category for its ability to convert national team passion, spanning both the Men’s and Women’s teams, into a measurable digital asset.

With over 500,000 registered fans, Vivo Azzurro Fan demonstrates the power of a platform-independent model. By building a robust first-party database, the portal enables the FIGC to maintain a direct, value-led dialogue with supporters all season long, stretching far beyond the 90 minutes on the pitch.

Vivo Azzurro Fan relies on three core pillars:

• Proprietary Database: An active, highly profiled customer base that minimizes reliance on third-party algorithms
• Continuous Engagement: Interactive mechanics that keep the conversation alive 365 days a year, well past matchday
• 1-to-1 Marketing: Data utilization engineered to foster a direct, personalized relationship with every individual fan

A2A Smile Earns Special Mention for Gamification

A2A Smile, the behavioral and experiential loyalty program developed for A2A Energia, earned a Special Mention in the Gamification category. The project was celebrated for transforming customer relationships within the energy sector through dynamic, engaging user journeys.

Integrated into A2A Energia's broader Ghost Loyalty strategy, A2A Smile guides customers along an interactive path that rewards virtuous habits and sustainable choices:

• Engagement Ecosystem: leverages missions, levels, badges, and member-get-member initiatives to drive active participation
• Predictive Models: Behavioral data feeds proprietary algorithms, empowering the brand to anticipate customer needs and tailor the user experience
• Everyday Value: A true paradigm shift, turning the utility-customer dynamic into a long-term, trust-based partnership

Twenty Years of Innovation in Relationship Marketing

Reaching these milestones at the Promotion Awards 2026 holds special meaning for Advice Group, as the award’s 20th anniversary mirrors our own 20-year milestone. Founded in 2006, an era when loyalty meant physical cards and mail-order catalog rewards, we deliberately chose to go against the grain, pioneering the shift toward digital stamp cards and data-driven value.

Over the past two decades, we have guided the market through its most profound transformations:

• We were among the first to turn brand-user interactions into actionable behavioral data.
• We introduced the concept of Behavioral Loyalty, shifting the focus from "what people buy" to "how people interact".
• With over 40 national and international awards under our belt, these latest wins for Verabilia, Vivo Azzurro Fan, and A2A Smile reaffirm our standing as industry pioneers. We continue to build data-driven behavioral loyalty and engagement frameworks that power proprietary Walled Gardens and predictive models.

These four accolades celebrate more than just project excellence—they validate the strategic synergy between our team, our partners, and the forward-thinking brands who share our vision for a new era in user-brand relationships, where data serves as the foundation for mutual value creation.

Since 2006, turning customer relationships into value engines for business.