Case Study: The Toy Association achieves 75% faster awards setup with OpenWater

How The Toy Association Achieved 75% faster setup time with OpenWater

The Toy Association, which runs the Toy of the Year (TOTY) Awards for the toy industry, faced a fragmented and time-consuming nomination and voting process. Its previous system required separate voting sites, manual spreadsheet tallying, and extra work to handle third-party nominators, creating delays and errors that cost staff weeks of time. OpenWater was brought in to help streamline the awards workflow.

The Toy Association implemented OpenWater to centralize nominations, judging, and voting in one platform. OpenWater cut ballot setup time from one month to one week, eliminated manual vote tallying so winners could be identified within a day of voting close, and automated communications and reminders. The results included a 75% reduction in ballot setup time, 100% increase in media ballot participation, and more than 1,000 bot-submitted votes eliminated through locked ballot access.

The Toy Association