11 bullet points on awards

One week this summer, along with being trained by a new puppy, hosting a 5yr old’s birthday party and having a long over due vacation, I was lucky enough to judge the Strategy Awards. I had a bunch of cases to look through and evaluate – all of which represented fantastic work from agencies and brand marketers from some of the world’s most recognizable brands. The pride that people felt in their work and the effort that went into each submission really jumped off the page and it was an utter pleasure to read, let alone evaluate, them. When I clicked my last buttons, I felt inspired and refreshed and anxious to let the puppy out.

Obviously job number one is to write a compelling strategy as a springboard to come up with amazing ideas but, as I was going through the submissions, I made a few notes that may help someone else as they slave away at 10pm at night trying to write an award winning submission.

1. Grab my attention – Dave Trott is right. In all of this stuff it’s about Impact -> Communication -> Persuasion. Having impact right from the off, in either a video or written submission is so important to telling the story you want, especially against a back drop of all the other cases being looked at at the same time
2. Follow the format – there were some great cases which really made me work to find things like the problem, the insight and even the results. Most importantly, tell me what the problem you’re trying to solve is and show me how you solved the problem – not just the creative but the insight (especially for the strategy awards)
3. In this creatively-led industry, it is very hard to communicate what your “strategy” is or was in a tangible or even comparative way. Was there really a strategy or was it a great creative idea that’s been backfilled or an immediate opportunity that was spotted and brilliantly executed? 
4. Always include results…and show me how the business results mapped back from the problem to solve. If you don’t have business results it may be too early to submit. Don’t worry about timing – as I mentioned I went through a lot of cases and don’t remember seeing any of them in real life (I think this says more about the media support that many Canadian brands have to give than anything else) so it doesn’t matter if you got it in for this year or the next year
5. If you’re going to include a BHAG to solve with your campaign, I definitely want to know that you solved it or you’re well on your way to solving it!
6. Out of all the campaigns I saw, for the most part, the ones that really stood out were the Not-for-profit (NFP) ones – mainly because the business problems and results were clearer…and I’m usually more adverse to using NFP cases in pitches so this was a surprise for me!
7. Judges have written, presented and sat through so many of these case videos that we can smell BS. Talk to us in plain English as if we’re your colleagues (we are) down the pub and you’ll get a much more receptive audience
8. I love a good hack – but I saw a Spotify hack, a billboard hack and an Audible hack. Sometimes there’s too much of a good thing. The same with clothing drops – which seemed to be very popular – and to be brutally honest, I don’t really care if a clothing hack sold out if it didn’t move the needle on the actual product or brand
9. COVID loomed large as you can imagine but the picture painted in the case studies about how brands have helped celebrate the end of the restrictions is in stark contrast to the role I, as a consumer, felt they played – we always have an outsized opinion of how brands can “help” in real life and there’s a credibility gap that came across in some of the cases
10. I have always liked the one page image cases – quite often they were more useful and illuminating than the videos
11. Watch what you name your files – calling something a Cannes submission sets a level of expectation that you have to meet!

Just a final note to say a huge congratulations to everyone who was able to produce something they were proud enough of, to enter into the awards in the first place. There were some amazing cases and very worthy winners who will understandably get the plaudits.