Your guide to winning an award

Awards are a wonderful way to have your brand recognised widely, creating credibility and building your reputation. They are particularly powerful if the nominations are peer reviewed and shortlisted on merit.

Here are nine things to consider when pulling together your award entry.

• Start by spotting the opportunities that exist – which gives you the opportunity to demonstrate and record strategic value as part of your project, not as an afterthought for an awards entry. Strategy and planning hurt nobody.

• Look for awards – it makes your team feel special and valued.

• Research what ‘good’ looks like, by reviewing previous winning entries.

• Get organised. Form a working group – look at what you could do; look at how you could fit your work into the judging criteria. It’s a team that wins an award.

• Over deliver. Measure measure measure. Make sure you set KPIs and exceed them. Make sure delivery is outstanding. For PR awards, look at AMEC model for measurement. And as any PR worth their salt will know, NEVER USE AVES

• Remember, it’s not an award entry, it’s an application. Scrutinise what you write through the lens of what the judges’ question asks for. Be as objective as you can. Stakeholder feedback is great, but don’t use it as a vanity measure.

• Resist the temptation to use dazzling style. Your application doesn’t need to look pretty – focus on saying something meaningful.

• Try to be a judge if you can – it makes a real difference. You will know what works – and importantly, what doesn’t.

• Keep to the word count – judges have to read LOADS – and waffle is a wasted opportunity. Tell your story and make it as concise as possible.

And if you want further information on this, why not book a one hour awards planning/ co-creation session with us at Tigerfish PR?

Note: these top tips are based on a CIPR webinar given by Hayley James

Image by AxxL from Pixabay