Awards Are Nice, But Entering is Even Better
We recently won an American Advertising Federation award (formerly known as the ADDYs) at the national level for a project for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT). We were the only Wisconsin agency to win at that level, for the work we did to help support WisDOT’s highway traffic safety campaign with the Choose Your Ride vehicle pictured above. We very often enter our work into industry awards competitions. So, very nice for us, but why devote the time and resources necessary to put together an entry?
We have discovered some very good reasons to put our work out there for judging amongst our peers. Here are some thoughts about why you might consider looking into entering a reputable awards program in your industry:
1. How are we doing? It’s nice to see how your work stacks up with others in your industry. Judges comments can be very insightful.
2. What was the journey? Putting together the entry itself puts the work into perspective: What were the objectives? What was our process? Did the results meet or exceed the objectives? The journey is sometimes MORE or AS important as the results.
3. What are other people doing? Whether you win or not, you will learn about new ideas, strategies, tactics that could be applicable to you or your customers. Or, could spark a completely innovative new product or service.
4. Yay, team! Everyone likes to get a certificate, medal or trophy. It’s a great way to build team and morale among employees.
5. Yay, clients! Clients/customers tend to like it when the work you did with them wins an award. It builds trust with all customers when they know that their vendor partner is an award winner.
