We often get asked why organisations should enter awards, here are a few FAQ's on why:
QUESTION: WHY SHOULD YOU ENTER AWARDS?
Answer: There are lots of reasons to enter awards. Clearly, the self-promotion doesn’t go amiss – the reputation of many businesses, particularly agency and consultancy firms has largely been built on awards showcasing their work to potential clients and the rest of the industry.
But we also think that awards shows are a great way to measure your work against the best in the industry, and there’s a real sense of satisfaction in other people saying your work was great for the teams that delivered campaigns. Of course, clients also really value awards – again, being able to demonstrate to internal colleagues is one way to show how great an in-house team is relative to the competition.
And finally, they act as a beacon for talent. People want to come to an agency that leads its field and awards wins are a pretty good proxy for that. In the battle to find the best in the industry to join us, a decent run at the big awards shows is definitely something that attracts people to us as a business.
QUESTION: WHY ARE THE ESG AWARDS IMPORTANT?
ANSWER: There are lots of reasons why the ESG Awards are important.
The range of categories that are recognised is a win – it means that work with clients is judged alongside brand peers.
But more than that, the range of work that you will come up against, as well as the range of work that you get to see and hear about will be a brilliant showcase for the industry as a whole.
And of course, ESG is a really important area for business. It's important to showcase the success of modern capitalism and the role of honest, inspirational communications at the heart of the best ESG case studies.
QUESTION: DO AGENCIES GROW MORE QUICKLY BECAUSE THEY'VE WON SO MANY AWARDS?
ANSWER: Yes, without question. It’s not like agencies that do brilliant work all win awards. But you don’t tend to hear about it anywhere near as much.
QUESTION: DOES A TRACK RECORD OF WINNING AWARDS HELP YOU GET ON PITCH LISTS?
ANSWER: I think a lot of clients will select a handful of agencies they know and then add in one or two that have done well at the awards shows.
QUESTION: HOW DO YOU WRITE A DECENT AWARDS ENTRY?
ANSWER: Tell a story that will grab someone at the outset. Don’t dwell on the “internal challenges” and “process” of getting the work done – it was important to you at the time but gets in the way of a great story. Focus on the absolute core: what was your brilliant insight, what was your brilliant idea, what did you do, what were the results. If it’s a good piece or work that should be an easy story to tell. And give results. Judges want to know the commercial impact.
QUESTION: WHAT'S THE BEST PROCESS FOR WRITING AN AWARD ENTRY?
ANSWER: The best award entries start as soon as the campaign is in the wild: make sure the measurement is built in when you run a campaign you’ve got a good feeling about from an awards perspective. As soon as it’s live do some consumer research into awareness or speak to the client to get traffic or sales data. If you’ve done that and the campaign worked then three months later when you write the entry, you’re already half-way there.