1 Quick Task To Avoid Award Season Pain

One easy way to get ahead of awards season, is to start making folders for each possible entry on your server, where you can dump anything that might help the entry when it comes to writing.

Better still, hand this task list below to a junior person, and get them to update the folders monthly with new info:

• Make a case studies space on the server, and get in the habit of adding a folder in every time a project goes live. It doesn’t matter if it has nothing in it to start with!

• Then start dumping in it anything that might help when it comes to telling this project story. Below is a handy list that’ll help jog the memory.

• Pull together what you can for find from the list for now, and be aware of the gaps on each project, that way you can ask the client to fill these once they are on-board with the award. This will give a nice list of specific actions to get started on.

I would keep your eyes peeled for anything from this non-exhaustive list:

• Press release from time of launch

• Case studies/ presentations/ talks where the project was referred to

• Any images you have that showcase the project: lifestyle, pack shots, animations - the more the merrier. This ensures that if a different/new designer is working on the entry, they have a rich source of reference material to understand the brand personality when they design the PDF.

• Qual and quant research - prior to launch and post launch ideally

• As much Nielsen/ Scan Track data already shared by client.

• Download all The Grocer ‘Focus On’ features relating to your project’s category, if you have a subscription/access

• Download The Grocer ‘year in review’ issues for the year prior and year after the project too - these are gold dust when writing the Competitive Context section of the entry, and contrasting your brand's results with their competitors! Normally sent in December, this is a bumper edition of the publication, and the thickest issued all year.

• The original client brief, paying particular attention to the objectives (in marketing speak)

• The original design brief, paying particular attention to the design task (in agency speak)

• Client quotes - from the press release, thank you emails, texts - anything!

• Customer quotes - from research, social media, customer services (this can be a hidden gem!)

Your IT guy won’t thank me for the duplicate server space, but I find this method the single most effective way to beat last-minute awards writing panic.

Did you know that this is an excerpt from the Awards Module of the Complete Kaffeen Toolkit? It’s chock-full of templates, tools, tips and even draft emails to clients. You can grab it in the Kaffeen Shop.