We know how stressful it can be to choose a project, curate a story, and submit your award submissions for just the right category. Add in uncertainty about who the judges are and how your competition stacks up and it can become more of a stressful project than a celebratory one. During our most recent Rise & Grind session, we were joined by Middle of Six’s Wendy Simmons and Melissa English, as well as Kenda Salisbury, FSMPS, CPSM, to discuss best practices for award submittals, getting to know your judges, and how to make the details count. They also gave helpful tips on planning for the win from the beginning.

Don’t forget to submit your project for SMPS Oregon’s MEA’S by May 6^th.

Best Practices

• Make sure the project is submitted to the right category.
• Don’t stress yourself out of submitting! Get a team involved and share the work between primary development, proofreading, and submitting.
• Check out previous winners and honorees to better understand your Host’s audience and interests.
• Don’t trigger the judge’s pet peeves: use readable text, high res jpegs, and proofread your work.

After discussing best practices, the discussion then turned to ideas and tips to wow the judging panel and dive into the details of the submission planning and development.

Tips to Make your Submittal Shine!

• When starting a wow-worthy project, keep the end goals in mind. Collecting data, before and after photos, and budgets makes the submission process smoother, and helps form a strong narrative.
• Don’t forget the facts and figures! After the storytelling and visuals are set up, remember that many “Results” sections require data to truly show the extent of the marketing campaign. Examples: Was there impact on the community, project, or people in a measurable way? Was there: an increase in LN followers, website traffic, ad clicks? If you started new internal marketing initiatives, did you get better responses from employees or project investment?
• Consider the judging panel. Think about your (judg-y) audience, their background, and what they will consider high and low points in a submission.
• Get an outside perspective. If you’re pursuing awards that you haven’t submitted to before, then talk to your network. Learn about which obstacles they faced and any tips or feedback they received.
• Plan your visuals. Framing a story takes skill—involve your team’s best photographer, or hire a professional to present the best images you can.

Putting together an awards packet can be daunting, but the chance at winning and further validating the talent, skill, and time that went into a project is a worthwhile pursuit. Second to this, continuing to push your firms name and services out to the varied audiences that peruse these events can assist in building relationships and branding. Good luck with your submissions!

Thank you to Wendy, Melissa, and Kenda for leading this discussion!