Awards season is well and truly here, and with that – our content calendar is growing! Although it’s our role to put the pieces together for our clients… knowing how to stand out and share what wins is always the tricky part, and winning always comes down to this.
As we put fingers to the keys to draft award submissions this season, we thought we’d share a few tips for those that are looking to lift the trophy, get recognised and submit something award-winning.
1. Pick the category you’re confident you can win
It’s tempting to enter the flagship: the biggest budget, the biggest name, the one everyone in the office still talks about. Despite this seeming like the option for your business, judges don’t mark on scale. A 150-person launch with a tight brief, clear objectives and results to match can beat a 5,000-delegate conference with fuzzy goals and a lovely sizzle reel.
It is most sufficient to read every category before you choose and pick the one where your evidence is strongest, not the one with the most prestige. If you’re choosing multiple entries for your business, ensure you write each entry from scratch because the same judges may read both. These same judges will notice copy and pasting words – and you do not want this simple mistake to let you down when you have such strong ideas and movement.
2. Study the brief and know exactly what the judges are looking for
Judges usually mark against set criteria, and many awards publish them along with the weightings. If they do, print them out and write your answers against them.
Studying the brief means you can take the time to look hard at those weightings. If creativity is worth 40% and logistics 10%, an entry that spends most of its word count on the transport plan is giving away marks. Use the wording of each criterion in your headings or opening lines so the judge can see straight away which box you’re ticking. If nothing is published, the questions are the scoring. Answer the one they asked, not the one you wish they’d asked.
3. Make your entry memorable
Judges read dozens of entries in one sitting, and in the events space a lot of them sound the same. The key word here is passion – the entries they remember have passion in them and a story to tell: what the client needed, what you did about it, and what changed as a result.
It is important to consider being careful with the language – event award panels are mostly made up of people who do this for a living, and certain words do nothing for them. Want some advice on words to avoid here? Well, every other entry in the pile will use ‘seamless’, ‘unforgettable’, ‘immersive’, ‘bespoke’, ‘curated’ – you want to stand out of the pile, not fit in.
To do exactly this, you should swap the adjective for the thing that actually happened. Not “an immersive experience” but “guests walked through a working bakery to reach the plenary”. Not “seamless delivery” but “1,200 delegates through registration in 22 minutes”. Specifics are what a judge remembers when the panel sits down to compare notes.
4. Stick to the facts, don’t fluff them up
There’s a word limit for a reason. Phrases like “We grew a lot” mean nothing, and neither does “1,000 attendees” on its own. Judges want to know what changed because of the event, so show your wins and provide the evidence to match.
Tie every result back to an objective set at the start. If the goal was leads, show the leads and what they turned into. If it was re-engaging lapsed members, show how many came back and how many renewed. Numbers that tend to work well for events include:
- registration-to-attendance rate, compared with your norm
- session attendance or dwell time
- NPS or satisfaction against the previous year
- leads, meetings, sales or renewals attributed to the event
- rebooking, of the event itself or of you
- cost per attendee, or carbon per attendee if sustainability was in the brief
If the client won’t let you share budget or revenue, use percentages and ratios. “Delivered 18% under budget” tells the judge what they need without giving anything away.
5. Be honest about the challenges
Every event has a challenging moment – the keynote whose flight was cancelled, the marquee that flooded the night before, and the supplier that went under a fortnight out.
Leave those out and your entry reads like a press release. Put them in, briefly, with what you did about it, and you’re showing resilience, which is exactly what the judges are there to reward. Everyone on that panel knows nothing goes perfectly. A story where everything went to plan is harder to believe, not easier.
6. Write clearly, then get a second pair of eyes
Write in clear, concise English and leave the jargon out. Not every judge will know your kit list or your acronyms. It is also strongly advised to never copy and paste from a case study or a proposal – this means it will read like what it is, and it rarely answers the question being asked.
When you’re done, hand it to someone who wasn’t involved. This means the piece has the opportunity to be seen by fresh eyes, where you can ask them to check for typos and wrong figures. They then can help further by telling you in a sentence or two what you achieved and why it mattered. If they can’t, a judge won’t be able to either.
7. Feature your advocates
Strong quotes, testimonials and press coverage do something you can’t… they prove it from the outside. You should always check early that the client is happy to be named and to have their results shared, because chasing sign-off the night before the deadline is stressful for everyone.
While you’re asking, get a proper quote. A proper quote consists of valuable information about the outcome; what changed for their business or their people – instead of “they were fantastic to work with”. After this, you can look beyond the client. A line from an attendee, a speaker or the venue team can be more convincing than one from the person who signed the invoice. Guests’ social posts count too, as long as you can link to them.
8. Provide supporting materials
Most awards let you add documents, links and images to give your entry context. Use them, but choose carefully: a one-page results summary, a few strong photos and a link to coverage will do more than a folder of everything. Check the rules for formats and file sizes (many cap each file at around 2MB), and reference each attachment in your written answers so the judge knows why it’s there.
Judges love video, because it’s the closest they’ll get to being there. Rather than sending your sizzle reel, cut something for the entry:
- Keep it short. Ninety seconds to two minutes is usually plenty, and check the rules for a maximum.
- Make the first ten seconds count. Open on the problem or the moment, not a logo animation.
- Add captions. Plenty of judges will watch with the sound off.
- Show the event working, not just looking nice. Full rooms, real reactions, the build in action.
Before you hit submit
Remember – to stand out, your judges can only score what’s on the page. Gather your evidence early, answer the question they asked, and write for people who know the industry as well as you do. Then, let the detail do the work and don’t leave it to the last minute. The best entries we write are the ones where clients share everything early.
If you are looking for support with your award entries, please speak to us here.
