top Tips For Submitting An Award-winning Entry
Earlier in the week, we hosted members of the UK sport industry at our offices in Holborn for an in-depth discussion about the Sport Industry Awards 2023.
As well as learning about the 18 categories that will make up next year’s awards, the gathered crowd heard from three sports business stalwarts who – as former winners, current judges, or both – are instinctively familiar with what it takes to win the sport industry’s most prestigious prize.
On the panel:
For those that weren’t able to attend the event in person, here are our top takeaways from the event that will hopefully help you in submitting an award-winning entry.
Good luck!
1. THINK ABOUT THE ‘WHY’ AND THE ‘SO WHAT’
AW- One of the things that we’re all guilty of is jumping immediately to ‘What we did’. Something we used to talk about a lot when putting our entries together was ‘Why’. We’re privileged to be in an industry where we’re all facing the same challenges but fundamentally, we’re all very different organisations. We’ve got different stakeholders, different objectives, and different cultures. So, I cannot emphasize enough, take the time to think about why you’re different. What is going to jump off the page when the judges read that first paragraph? And that first paragraph really is critical.
What is going to jump off the page when the judges read that first paragraph. And that first paragraph really is critical.
PS – I totally agree. For us, it was a chance to reflect internally on our year. So many things had happened but we had to really think about the things that stood out. It’s really hard because you want to write about everything. For us, it was really the ‘So what?’ We’d done all these things but ‘So what?’ And if we couldn’t really answer that question, it didn’t deserve to be in there. There were plenty of things that we were proud of but that maybe weren’t very impactful, or things that maybe had lots of eyeballs at the time but nobody cared two months later.
2. HARNESSING THE POWER OF THE WRITTEN WORD
AW – If you think about the time and effort we put into making lovely videos and yet when it comes to writing things down, we often just copy and paste some stuff from here into there, and take that bit from over here and that thing from there.
The power of the written word, which I would say as a former journalist, is immense. When you think about the people that you have around you. Think about the people who are really good with words. Think about the people who read something you’ve written and say, ‘There are 10 words in here you just don’t need. Strip them out.
PS – If it’s not jumping out immediately, it’s not going to be the one you remember after you’ve read 10, 20, 30 entries.
3. MAKE SURE TO MARRY CREATIVE AND RATIONALE
MR – The main thing I noticed last year is, as an industry, we’ve become very good at learning how to fuse the right and the left brain. When I started in the industry, we were all about the big creative flowing ideas and actually evidencing the results and how that played against our business objectives sort of got lost along the way. And then, and this is maybe how Two Cirlces was formed, we were very focused on the data, the evidence, the results, the analytics, the ROI, the KPIs and every other acumen, and maybe we lost some of the creativity.
Some of the entries last year were just phenomenal in managing to do both. Kiyan Prince is a great example where you could see all the creative and emotive stuff, but they also had hard evidence about the amount the charity generated, what it had done for their partners. They fused the creative and the rationale together really well.
4. THE INTERNAL IMPACT OF ENTERING THE AWARDS
PS –The recognition from your peers I think is the most important thing. The impact that we’re seeing is, all of our staff who have been there for years and years when we were at the very bottom of the pyramid, they feel like it was all worth it and they achieved this. That’s really special. For us, it was a wonderful pinch-me moment that we weren’t expecting.
AW – Obviously the ultimate objective is to win but being shortlisted is an unbelievable sign of amazing work. I think sometimes people don’t appreciate enough what an honour it is to be on the shortlist. Even just entering, having the guts to say ‘I’ve done some work that I’m really proud of and I’m going to write it up in the best possible way I can’ is important. Whether it then becomes a case study for doing more stuff internally, whatever it might be. It’s not just about the awards, it’s also about your own position within the organisation and your team being proud of what they’ve done.
5. SUPPORTING MATERIAL MIGHT MAKE THE DIFFERENCE
AW – My last tip, and it’s something we try to think about a lot in the judging I’ve been asked to help with, the supporting material really matters. Often the supporting material felt like stuff people had lying around as opposed to stuff that had actually been crafted. It’s a win. It’s more words that you haven’t been able to fit in the entry form.
It’s more words that you haven’t been able to fit in the entry.
Entries for the Sport Industry Awards 2023 will close on Thursday 8th December, however, extensions will be allowed for 2022 FIFA World Cup campaigns. As with all the Sport Industry Awards, the selection process for the winners is fully overseen by a team of independent adjudicators.
Check out the full list of categories or start your entry here.
For more information, contact: Molly.Reynolds@sportindustry.biz
