tips for a great entry to Piccaso Awards Europe

JUDGES' Top Tips for a great entry
 

Dos …
  1. Write it well: draft and redraft, ensure it is proofed by others.
  2. Be clear and concise throughout the entry.
  3. Answer the questions directly, don’t just cut and paste pre-prepared texts.
  4. Avoid superlatives and subjective judgements about success.
  5. Secure third-party endorsements if appropriate / requested.
  6. Highlight real, measurable results, achievements, deliverables and differentiators.
  7. Draw out the ‘above and beyond’ aspects of your entry.
  8. Build content around aims / objectives of the work, what you did, how you did it, results, showing proven evidence of success.
  9. Use headlines and bullet points to emphasise key points.
  10. Ensure you provide context, the ‘story behind the story’ and focus on benefits from your achievements to stakeholders as well as facts.
 
DON’Ts …
  1. Don’t rewrite / rehash sales collateral.
  2. Don’t use the same text in all entries - especially if you are submitting several entries around the same piece of work. Each submission should be bespoke to the specific entry criteria for each category.
  3. Don’t use too much ‘in-speak’, acronyms or over technical language.
  4. Don’t assume too much knowledge of your business or its offerings.
  5. Don’t exceed the word count, file size or page number limits.
  6. Don’t miss the final entry deadline!
     

Plan your entries now

The entry deadline may seem a long way off, but before you know it, it will be time to submit.  Start thinking about / planning the content of your entries now.  Will you require customer testimonials?  Will you need client approval / senior management sign off?  Are the performance statistics freely available?  All this can take more time than you might think.

The key is to leave plenty of time for all the critical stages required for writing, collating, approving and submitting your entry. A well thought out and planned submission will regularly beat a rushed, last minute one!
 

Discuss your entries with your colleagues and teams

They were essential in ensuring you are performing at an outstanding level, so they know as well as anyone the detail behind what you have achieved and how you achieved it over the last 12 months.
 

supporting evidence is paramount

Try to be as specific about your achievements as you can. Ensure you use positive language and forceful adjectives will help, but it is the detail, evidence and performance related data statistics that will differentiate / separate your nomination from the pack.
 

Relate your entries back to your customers

It’s positive customer feedback that drives company success, so use excellent customer feedback to support your entries too.
 

Structure your entries and focus on the detail of your performance

It’s tempting to write down all of your successes in a few action-packed, juicy paragraphs, but you may end up with an unclear entry that does not follow the category description. Focus on what you were aiming to achieve, what you did to achieve it, how you did it, and what were your results vs your initial target / plan? Combine the narrative with supporting data and testimonials to offer independent / third party endorsement in support of your successes.
 

Be clear and concise

You, of course, know your company and what you do you do inside out – but this will not always be the case with the judges – ensure you are clear and that you avoid any technical / in-house language, jargon and acronyms. Make it easy for the judges to understand your submission. Provide background where applicable, so the judges have an understanding of your business / product / initiative, with context, where applicable. Ensure your submissions are proofread for accuracy, spelling mistakes, typos, grammar and punctuation.
 

Supporting material

You have the option of including additional / supplementary information in support of your application.  However, remember that the judges have a number of entries to review and of course a limited amount of time to spend on each entry, so if included, ensure you focus on the key elements that you want to get across – and remember, quality is often much better than quantity!
 

Ensure you build your submissions around the entry DESCRIPTIONS provided

Ensure you provide a bespoke submission for each entered category.  Do NOT include the same generic submissions across multiple categories. The words in your entry should be your main focus and be targeted to the selected category.

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