Be Recognized: Lessons Learned to Help Improve Your Marketing Communications Awards Submission
Posted by Communications on Dec. 14, 2021 / Blog / Subscribe 0
For many of us, our job includes helping our technical teams put together award submissions for completed projects. It’s an exciting time to step back and celebrate the accomplishments and completion of the project – and if you are lucky and worked on the original proposal – you have had a hand in the entire life cycle of the project.
Often marketers focus on the achievements of the teams they support and don’t take time to appreciate the work we’ve done throughout the year. The SMPS Marketing Communications Awards (MCAs) allow us to highlight and recognize those marketing projects that made us stand out from the crowd, improve our brand, and win work for our firms. With nearly 40 categories ranging from Advertising to Holiday Pieces to Social Media, there is a category that fits your best marketing effort!
The MCAs require significant effort and record keeping to be able to submit the necessary information for each of the six required responses. A great way to prepare for the MCAs is to submit your marketing project(s) to your Chapter’s local awards! The SMPS Philadelphia’s Philly’s Phinest MCAs uses the same six required responses as the national MCAs – which makes submitting a great trial run of your entry and a way to confirm whether your project has what it takes for the larger MCA competition. I don’t believe I would have been successful at the national level without taking the time to submit locally first. Winning in two categories and Best in Show at the Philly’s Phinest MCAs, proved my marketing projects were unique and could be successful at the next level.
Here are some of the advantages I’ve identified for submitting to a local MCA competition:
- Extra Development Time – Submitting for the local MCAs forced me to start my process early. I utilized time in December to start gathering my information, drafting responses, and developing graphics. I wasn’t thinking about submitting to the MCAs when I worked on these efforts, so I didn’t have the required information neatly organized. This extra time allowed me to search through notes, emails, calendar appointments, files, and group chats, to identify the information needed.
- Extra Review Time – While I took on the task of pulling the submission together, my colleagues who worked on the efforts with me were able to review and provide feedback for the submission. Starting the process earlier allowed time for their review and continued editing and fine-tuning.
If you’ve submitted to the MCAs before, you know the character limit for the required responses are a challenge. The extra time also afforded me the opportunity to refine my submission writing to be able to say everything I needed to say and still stay within the character limitations.
- Judges Feedback – The absolute best advantage to submitting in a local Chapter MCAs was the ability to review feedback from the judges. In addition to seeing the judges’ scores and understanding where the submission may have missed the mark, their comments were extremely helpful in pinpointing specific missing information that impacted the score and would impact the score at the next level if I decided to submit nationally. These are some examples of the feedback I received:
I went back to my original responses and determined how to address each of these comments. Because my responses were essentially complete, I used the time between receiving the judges’ feedback and the SMPS MCAs submission deadline to revise and strengthen my submission.
Challenge: “How long did it take to create this site? I’m assuming that technical folks were involved – yet brief doesn’t mention that.”
Solution: I went back, plotted the schedule, and determined there were 13 days between agreement on the new presentation concept and the shortlisting interview. I revised my creative brief text to highlight this short timeframe and redesigned one of the supporting images to illustrate the schedule and who was involved for each day of the project.
Challenge: “Must provide an estimate of staff labor costs to develop site. Did not fully answer question.”
Solution: The additional time allowed me to estimate staff labor costs, which I incorporated into my written response.
Challenge: “Didn’t answer question – What were your analytical goals.”
Solution: I made sure to address this key component I was missing that if not included would have led to lost points.
Challenge: “Can you further quantify the number of hours spent?”
Solution: The extra time gave me the opportunity to complete additional research to estimate the hours spent on the effort.
Challenge: “How many of the conference attendees were potential clients?”
Solution: My colleague and I went through the conference attendee list and assigned each attendee a category, which we incorporated into a supporting image to showcase the audience and then highlighted in the written response which groups we were targeting and why.
Challenge: “There is little discussion about budget.”
Solution: This feedback highlighted missing information that I was able to calculate and incorporate into my written response.
Thanks to the judges’ honest feedback and the extra time I had in my schedule, I was able to improve my submissions – both of which were finalists at the 2021 SMPS MCAs and one went on to win the Award of Excellence in the Trade Show category. Receiving recognition from our peers and industry colleagues for our marketing, communications, and business development work is an amazing feeling! If you are on the fence about submitting, I hope these lessons learned encourage you to take the leap and submit your best work!
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