Effectiveness Papers- A Practical Guide: Part 1

Let’s be honest, if you are working full time in an agency, awards papers are a pain in the ass. Agency life does not usually follow the 9-5 and people in agencies, tend to have a lot of plates spinning all the time. So chucking an awards paper entry into the mix can be like pulling the pin on a grenade and then jumping on it.

We all know they’re coming, they tend to spin into view about a year out, they look like a monkey and they sit on your back for the next 10 months, then they start to poke you in the temple until you do something about them- at least this was my experience.

I have written a lot of these papers and won a good few too, so I am familiar with the process and have a couple of pointers to help anyone embarking on the journey- and let’s call it that- crammers beware!

The swots amongst us will have started their Effie journey at the planning and briefing session for the specific client challenge at hand, clearly stating business objectives and distilling them into marketing and communications objectives, opening a file called ‘Effie’ and creating sub folders for each section and another for results and research and the list goes on. You will wish you were that person the night before the deadline. The other way to go is to gather all the stuff, sort through it the night before, lose half of it at 4am, drive home at 7am, go back to the office for 8.30AM and shout at IT for not being able to retrieve it. The former is preferable but there is an in between approach that also works.

First things first, as I say to the kids in my athletics coaching- it’s all about winning!

Why enter at all?

A) We now live in an awards culture and you need to do yourself a favour

B) You believe in your work and it deserves it

C) Excellent cases need to be recorded as they are a masterclass in what we do.

When I run a workshop on effectiveness papers or coach someone through writing a paper I always start by telling them that it is ‘not all on them’ because there will be a team of people to help, but then quickly reminding them that in fact, no matter who has put their hand up to help (and people will help) every paper needs an owner and therefore ‘it is all on them’, they need to direct it, write it and so they need to do themselves a favour and get organised, assemble a team and, if appropriate, involve another agency that worked on it.

Start with the deadline and create a CPA- you do it for clients, so do it for this. That CPA should have a longlist of options for review, a final shortlist date and allocation of paper ‘owners’, a review of the elevator pitch for the case- (in a few simple sentences why might this case win?) If you are struggling at the elevator pitch stage then you may not have a case to make.

Then download the paper and populate it with bullet points for each section, do this roughly at first and then refine over time, until you are ready to commit. Make sure you have shared and included clients on the team and on the journey, factor time to review and discuss the entry development. Always build in time for others to review and ensure it all makes sense to the un-inducted. Only then do you arrive at ‘ready to upload’.

Next week, we’ll complete this journey and finish with a 5 point plan for success.  If you don’t like waiting, send me an email amy@pt78.ie