How to win awards (or better late than never)

We’ve probably all been spending way, way too much time on Facebook recently and thats my excuse for the delay in covering our event on July the 1oth - “How to win awards”.  The evening, kindly hosted by LBi, as attended by 22 people, hungry for some insight into how to enter awards successfully - BIMA or otherwise.

When we were planning the evening, we decided that we wanted to answer peoples questions and keep it informal and as it turned out thats very much how it felt. We asked everyone to write questions on paper and pass them to the front. Matthew Bath from DigitalArts, Damian Ferrar from Imagination and I just ploughed through them.

Some myths were dispelled, some experience and knowledge imparted and perhpas most significantly, we collectively considered how we could improve the BIMAs.

I will do is a couple more updates over the next day or two that list out the questions and the answers as best i can remember them. I’ll cap it all with some of the thoughts we had about teh future of the Awards and maybe you’ll comment on those so that we can continue to evolve our thinking?

Its late now and I need to change my Facebook status from “blogging” to “dreaming” so to close (and considering teh entry deadline has been extended, here are some of the Top Tips we suggested.

1. (Ironically) Submit early - or at least prepare to submit early. A great submission takes time to craft
2. Ask us questions - we will answer the. You can mail me directly at matthew.bagwell@conchango.com if this helps
3. Work with everyone who was involved , especially the creative and tech teams, who might be best placed to encapsulate why the work should win. better still, involve the client too.Doing os helps build on your relationship and is another opportunity for you to restate the importance you place on design excellence
4. Anticipate the whole cost of submitting - it can be expensive so make the very most of it and give yourselves teh very best change of winning
5. Maybe this should be number 1 but anyway - KEEP IT SIMPLE. the judges have hundreds of things to look at and the easier it is for them to understand, the more likely thay are of ‘falling into’ your submission. Its a marketing job . Grab attention and think, short is sweet.

Matt is “off to bed”