Submissions for the AdNews Agency Of The Year Awards 2023 close on September 19, 2023. Enter here.
Abigail Dawson, group communications director at Enero Group, has helped agencies win dozens of awards in her career.
And while she humbly says it “takes a village” to create a good submission, Dawson believes there are two halves to a good awards writer - half strategy and the other the skill to create a narrative.
Most recently, Dawson helped creative agency BMF, part of the marketing, technology and communications group Enero, top Adnews Agency of the Year for 2022.
The agency entered seven categories, was shortlisted six times and won three awards including Agency of the Year, Creative Agency of the Year and Ad Campaign of the Year.
The BMF team accepting AdNews' Agency of the Year 2022 award.
“It sounds cliche, but I can't write a good entry if we haven't created good work,” Dawson told AdNews. “An award submission is the culmination of great work from the entire agency throughout an entire year.
“While the creative work and results are a pivotal part of winning an entry, it isn't the sole key to success because what makes good work is a relentless focus on people, culture and clients.”
The strategy
The strategy of award writing is about knowing what resonates with the judges, how the system works and what's going to make your entry different to your competitors.
Putting an award entry together doesn't take a couple of weeks or months, the strategy behind a submission is a daily, year-round process for Dawson and her ‘work wife’ Elliott Holohan, communications manager at BMF Australia.
Throughout the year the duo earmarks the key awards they want to submit to and then at submission time the duo whittles down all the agency's campaigns created during the judging period to create a shortlist.
The key to creating a shortlist is to stick to a targeted set of questions, for Dawson and Holohan this includes - Which campaign has been the most effective? Which represents our brand of creativity the best? And which has been successful in previous award shows?
“Those guidelines help us stay aligned to the thinking of agency executives,” Dawson said.
After a shortlist, the duo then writes the entries according to the criteria of every category. For approval, they take their recommended creative entries to BMF’s chief creative officer Alex Derwin and strategy-based entries to chief strategy officer Christina Aventi. With Stephen McArdle, BMF's chief executive officer, overseeing all the enteries.
“Factoring time to collaborate with clients and agency partners is a big part of the process because submissions should be really collaborative,” Dawson said, "and, ultimately, they are very trusting and empowering in our recommendations."
The duo works hand in glove with the creative and strategy teams for feedback. They also lean on account management to gather the information for submissions.
“Typically speaking, agency of the year and culture entries are always the most time-consuming. Certainly for us, submissions may be rewritten two or three times just to make sure we’ve nailed the narrative, landed every key point and every word is chosen with purpose and punch.”
Dawson’s top advice for the strategy side of a submission is to "start writing earlier than you think. As soon as you see the call for entries, start writing your entry.
“After all, it's your brand on show you must do it justice.”
The final stage in their writing process is the ‘more brutal part’ the infamous culling, wordsmithing and finessing which involves “picking the nuggets of gold that tell a cohesive well written pithy story in very very few words,” Dawson said.
A lot of the strategy process involves making sure that what's written in the entry marries up to the keywords in the criteria and is also weighted accordingly - if you've got 1000 words with 40% on the creative idea, make sure you write 400 words on the creative idea.
Creating narrative
More practically, award writing is a soft skill that involves being able to spin a good narrative, so well that the judges actually enjoy reading it.
“Judges read a lot of entries - narrative certainly helps to not only grab their attention but express an agency's entire year of hard work in a way that feels unique and authentic to the business,” Dawson said.
To create a good narrative, Dawson’s best advice is to do something authentic to your brand - ensuring a submission expresses and embodies the agency, its personality, its tone of voice, its people, the results and the work.
“Go back to your brand pillars and what makes your brand different then replicate that - because that's obviously what has given you success in the past - if you can translate that into the written word you will have success in the future,” Dawson said.
The skills required for awards writing are quite similar to that of a journalist or a writer, “it’s much like writing a feature article or an opinion piece,” Dawson said.
You need to be able to find a hook, an angle, and tell your story concisely and powerfully. From there it’s about meticulously proofreading and giving yourself more space to reread it again and again.
So, where do you find these crazy people who love the process of award writing? “Data would tell us former trade journals are a good place to start,” Dawson said.
Dawson was a trade journalist for almost four years and Holohan was a freelance writer and a production assistant at Nine before going comms side.
“But really, a good awards writer could be anyone who knows how to tell a engaging story and determined to make it as perfect as possible.”
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