Writing award entries judges remember
Judges read a stack of entries that all say "innovative" and "strategic." The ones that stand out tell a clear story: the problem, the choice, the evidence, and why it mattered.
In 2019 our team's work received two Marketing Communications Awards — one for social media and one for Best in Show. I've written and read a lot of award entries since, and I've come to believe that most of them lose before the judge finishes the first paragraph.
Not because the work is weak. Because the entry is written like a list of everything the team did, instead of a story someone can follow and remember.
Judges are readers, too
An awards judge is usually a busy professional reviewing many entries in a limited window. They are reading the way most people read at work: scanning for the point. Research from Nielsen Norman Group has long shown that people scan far more than they read word by word. Judges are no different, and a wall of undifferentiated text asks them to do the work of finding your story.
So the first job of an entry is the same as the first job of any good piece of content: make the point obvious.
Lead with the problem, not the tactics
The strongest entries I've read open with the situation that made the work necessary. What was wrong, missing or at stake? Who needed to be reached, and why hadn't it worked before? A clear problem gives every tactic that follows a reason to exist.
Compare "We launched an integrated campaign across five channels" with a sentence that names the gap the campaign had to close. The second one tells the judge why they should care about the five channels.
Show the choice you made
Great work is a series of decisions. Entries that stand out explain one or two of them: the audience you chose to prioritize, the idea you committed to, the thing you deliberately didn't do. That's where judgment shows, and judgment is what judges are really evaluating.
An award entry isn't a résumé of the project. It's the case for one good decision.
Prove it with results that match the goal
If the goal was awareness among a specific audience, show reach and engagement within that audience. If the goal was leads, show leads. The most common mistake is reporting whatever numbers look biggest, even when they don't connect to the objective stated at the top. Judges notice the mismatch, and it undercuts everything above it.
Where you can, give context: a baseline, a comparison to the prior period, or a benchmark. A number without context is just a number.
Make it easy to read
Structure does a lot of the persuading. Use the headings the program asks for. Keep paragraphs short. Put the single most important result where it can't be missed. Show the work itself — clear images, links, samples — because judges want to see it, not only read about it. It's the same editing discipline I learned in newsrooms and still use for every piece of B2B content.
Write it while the work is fresh
The best time to start an entry is during the project, not the week before the deadline. Keep a running file: the original brief, the decisions and why you made them, the metrics as they come in, the best examples. When the call for entries opens, you're editing a story instead of reconstructing one.
Why it's worth doing well
Awards aren't the goal of good marketing. But writing a strong entry is a useful exercise for any team: it forces you to articulate what problem you solved, what you chose, and what changed as a result. That's the same story leadership wants to hear, and the same one your next client wants to read.
Sources and further reading
- Nielsen Norman Group, How Users Read on the Web (Jakob Nielsen, 1997)
- Nielsen Norman Group, Inverted Pyramid: Writing for Comprehension (Amy Schade, 2018)