What I Learned Judging The Effies
Recently, I had the pleasure of judging The Effie Awards. If you’re not familiar: The Effies are one of the top professional integrated marketing communications case study competitions globally. Teams work tirelessly to create Effie submissions and accompanying materials to stand out.
Winning an Effie for a client campaign is a rubber stamp of success, and almost always ensures you’ll go on to win other awards. Beyond beautiful creative and seamless communications, earning an Effie means you’ve made a real impact on the audiences you seek to affect. To win an Effie, is the closest you can get to winning an Oscar for marketing.
Going into judging the competition, I didn’t know what to expect. I was part of a team that won an Effie for Jack’s Frozen Pizza while at Ogilvy. From that, I knew a tie to sales was essential. Honestly, I didn’t know much more.
Coming out of the day’s sessions, i took key learnings that will affect how I and my teams write awards submissions moving forward. Here they are:
Teach yourself and your team about the difference between facts and insights. Facts drive activity. Insights drive meaningful change.
Disruptive ideas drive the most ROI. It’s not just something creatives say.
Write your awards submission like the person who’s reading it has just read 10 of them. Trust me. Keep up the good work.
Stop faking your results (this one came from LinkedIn, compliments of Alex Murray, creative director at JWT Dubai).
Perhaps the best way to create a meaningful and award-winning submission? Do purposeful work.
What are your thoughts on awards submissions? HMU on Twitter @SoMattKelly.