How to get data when your client won’t cooperate.

How to get data when your client won’t cooperate.
 

 

 Even with the most notice you could possibly give a client that you want to enter their project for an awards, invariably there are always those times when it really feels like you’re not getting the information you need to draft a winning entry.

Luckily we live in the internet age, Google is indeed your friend.

If you’ve got a few results under your belt already, you can likely supplement the rest with a couple of hours of research. There really is so much available free of charge, or with your current subscriptions to industry publications.

Here’s a list of 15 handy tools for award entry writing, that don't require client input.

This is an excerpt from my toolkit ‘How To Write Winning Award Entries’ which is full of templates, tools, tips and even draft emails to clients. You can grab it here.

  1. Euromonitor – I draw upon the exec summaries of paid reports to glean ‘overview of the market at time of brief’ infomation - http://www.euromonitor.com/

  2. And their blog is also useful for the same purpose - http://blog.euromonitor.com/

  3. Same goes for Mintel - http://www.mintel.com/mintel-reports

  4. Grocer Top Products Issue current and previous editions – This is the treasure trove. Old ones are useful for context prior to work, current ones for updates on performance. The Grocer releases this is December each year, and the PDF version on site is a handy one to download and keep on file!

  5. Grocer category reports (‘Focus On…’) – can be found here. As above, old ones are useful for context prior to work, current ones for updates on performance. The Grocer releases 1+ per category per year - https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/reports/category-reports/

  6. Award entries, case studies and press releases by other agencies who worked on the project – Particularly Media, Advertising, Digital, Research and PR agencies – You’d be surprised how often this leads to a shoe-in that makes it easier to get information you need from the client: ‘you gave X these results/ quotes, please can we have them updated…’ yields better results than asking a client to pull an entirely new set of data from scratch.

  7. Brand/product updates in trade press – these are often a great source of results, context and quotable quotes to adapt and get sign off on more easily rather than getting a whole new quote. Often you clients are asked for comment or release updates via their PR agency without your knowledge – doesn’t just happen at project launch, so get scanning https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/, https://fabnews.live/ and other vertical trade press for easy wins.

  8. Customer Service reports/ feedback – granted this requires some cooperation, but asking the client for an intro to their customer service team head gives you access to formalised reports of verbatim feedback gathered via phone, email and social. Often there are some lovely comments to incorporate, and in my experience customer service team leaders are normally more than happy to be involved in awards entries.

  9. Tweet Reach and other equivalents help to scan through customer feedback and comments via social with ease. There are often nice comments about design to cherry-pick for your entry - https://tweetreach.com/

  10. Instagram – use the search function to find pictures of customers engaging with your design, and screen grab them. It doesn’t matter if they are commenting on the redesign, this is an excellent visual way to demonstrate that it’s in favour. I find that the desktop version is much easier than mobile app for this purpose - https://www.instagram.com/

  11. Reviews sites to hear what consumers are saying. You can use command +F in chrome to then scan the page to see any design specific comments.

  12. Google Alerts is useful to track mentions of the client or design specific phrases relating to the client, as many will have flown under your radar! - https://www.google.co.uk/alerts

  13. Google Trends, particularly if a client has created a new category, or is pioneering a new trend, i.e. Matcha tea - https://trends.google.com/trends/

  14. Thesaurus! Your friend when you want to avoid using the word ‘increase’ for the 350th time in your entry! Keep the entry stimulating to read, to make sure the judge gets to the end. I like using the one within Word or the Mac desktop version

  15. Percentage calculator – This is a wonder for finding multiple ways to express the same result, thus getting you extra brownie points – http://www.percentagecalculator.net/

I hope that’s been helpful. This is an excerpt from my toolkit ‘How To Write Winning Award Entries’ which is full of templates, tools, tips and even draft emails to clients. You can grab it in the Kaffeen Shop.

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