The art and craft of writing awards entries

Seasoned judge Dominic Mills – with help from Tess Alps and Jenny Biggam – shares the dos and don’ts of submitting a winning entry.

Yippee! It’s awards season. Already.

As I write, planners (they mostly do the grunt writing work) are sitting down everywhere to pen their masterpieces – the ones that win gold, prestige, profile for the author, maybe a new job…and maybe a pay rise.

But what’s the secret? Here are some tips, culled from Jenny Biggam, founder and CEO of 7Stars and seasoned awards judge, Tess Alps, chair of Thinkbox, and little old me.

At this point, I confess, I have never won an award. So what do I know? But I’ve judged a lot of awards, and I’ve written (or ghost-written) a few winning entries.

Here are ten tips.

1. Know your audience

Clients often sit on awards juries. They’re busy people, and they don’t necessarily share the same cultural references – especially when it comes to humour – as agency judges.

I’m told of one occasion when a media-owner sales team submitted a rap-style video. Lots of swearing, lots of sex references. It didn’t go down well.

2. Keep your standards high

There are lots of award schemes out there, some of them free. But just because it’s free, don’t pump-and-dump your entries. The judges’ reputation is on the line as much as yours, and they won’t want to be seen to award low-quality.

And remember, the juries will form an impression of you and your agency from what they see. You’re up in front of potential clients and potential employers.

3. Think about how the judges filter their awards

Ok, so no two judges go about the process exactly the same way. But this is what happens: they get two large boxes of entries, maybe 40 or more in total. They have to make time for the reading. Personal time – at home, at weekends, early morning or last thing at night. Some times their heart sinks.

Many judges (OK, I do) start looking for reasons to reject entries just to keep the task manageable. They often skim-read to see whether the entry is worth a further look, or can be discarded quickly.

So they want to see stuff that inspires them. Stuff that demonstrates a high quality of thinking, a high quality of writing. Something that is different. Something that gets the message over right at the beginning. A powerful, pithy, executive summary helps.

4. Be single-minded

I’ve seen a lot of awards where the same case has been entered across multiple categories. Or indeed where it has been entered into multiple awards. I understand why: you’ve done the hard work, and you try to game the different schemes, finding the categories you think are weakest or where your chances of winning are higher.

Bad idea. Each category or awards demands its own entry.

And guess what, judges a) often judge more than one category, so they won’t want to read the same stuff twice or b) often sit on more than one awards jury. You’ll be rumbled.

5. Never over-claim, always substantiate

We’ve probably all been guilty of this, but remember that the judges are experienced, hardened and may well bring a professional scepticism to bear on your entry. It may even be their special subject, they may have category expertise, or they may work for a competing brand and have some inside knowledge.

It reminds me of that old adage, about a young man claiming to be a natural comedian. Don’t tell us you’re funny. Tell us a joke, and we’ll decide if you’re funny.

Biggam recalls judging a pre-Christmas experiential campaign for a retailer. It looked brilliant, but the entry fell down on the claimed business results, which completely ignored the effects of all the retailer’s other Christmas activity. “If the entry had stuck to the media results, it would have been better,” Biggam says.

But where you do show results, show them at each stage of the process and take the judges with you. Don’t leave everything for the big reveal at the end. First, they won’t have the same level of credibility; second, the judges may already have lost interest by this point.

Make the results relevant. Too many entries, Thinkbox says, show results that bear no relation to the initial objectives, either as required by the category or as stated in the brief. When this happens, judges smell a rat.

6. Stick to the word count

It’s surprising how often writers of entries forget this. Sometimes, they get carried away with their own brilliance, or the excitement of the story and exceed the stated maximum.

Don’t do this. It makes more work for the judges. And it’s unfair on those who do stick to the word count. And if a judge is looking for an easy reason to reject an entry, you’ve just handed it to them on a plate.

7. Build your own feedback loop

The discipline of writing an awards entry can be such that it helps you realise what you could have done better. Use this in future work and future awards entries.

8. Find a story

The best entries find a narrative thread and stick to it. Here are a few themes, which seem to cover the most compelling stories judges enjoy reading:

– David vs Goliath
– From minnow to mainstream
– We’re new
– We’ve got no money, so we have to out-think our competitors
– We were f****d, but we’re ok now
– From hero to zero and back again (redemption)

9. Tell a story