In the world of advertising and PR it seems dozens of competitions are held annually. And when we get acquainted with the results sometimes it may not be clear why this particular project won. Unfortunately (or fortunately) often the winner is not even the project that turned out to be the most beautiful or the most effective but the one that was best designed for submission.
Carefully study the requirements for the bid
For some reason that is not entirely clear, this point is often ignored or read inattentively by participants. Compliance with technical requirements is a point that can never be discounted. Yes, your project is brilliant and you are very creative, but sometimes you just need to be able to read and understand what is written to win the nomination. History has known many projects that were left on the sidelines of advertising festivals only because the jury did not have enough time to read 15 pages with a description of the project (instead of the required 1500 characters) or because the presentation of the contestant simply did not play the video which was supposed to make a key emphasis.
For example, to participate in the Silver Mercury, you need to fill out an application where you need to specify the tasks of the project, its description and results — each item must be within 600 characters. In addition, you must submit the presentation and video in accordance with the technical requirements, otherwise there is a risk that somewhere the presentation will not open and somewhere on the video the text will move or something like that will happen. Detailed requirements can be found on our website.
By the way, a useful tip for the future: if you are not sure what format of presentation you need, it is always better to choose PDF. It opens almost everywhere, regardless of the software and hardware technical parameters. It is in PDF that your text and images will remain in place, the colors will be as close as possible to the ideal and the original fonts will be displayed exactly as you intended them to be.
Be briefly
Put yourself in the place of the jury and evaluate your application with a critical eye. Would you understand the essence of the project and be able to form the necessary opinion if you saw this text for the first time in your life? No? Rewrite and shorten.
It is clear that when you spend several months on a project it is very tempting to tell everything about it everything in the smallest detail. But judges don't need total immersion in the project and they don't need to know everything, either. Only a General understanding of the tasks, ideas and results is necessary for the jury to make a judgment. And all these stories about sleepless nights and how you searched for huskies at three o'clock in the morning all over St. Petersburg leave for conversations at the after party.
Put it in context
However, sometimes the participants are too brief. So much so that it is impossible to understand how much their idea did its job.
Many competitive projects lack a description of the context — under what circumstances it became possible, what audience it was intended for and what task it was supposed to solve. If you submit a white piece of paper with a touching text written in Braille without explaining the context of the project not everyone will guess that this is a social ad for blind people.
Give me a picture
Give enough photos and videos. The keyword is sufficient. Usually 3-5 photos and a short video for 1-2 minutes is enough to illustrate absolutely any idea.
You don't need to shoot a video for an hour, send a thousand photos or link to an archive with all the graphic files. The judges won't appreciate it. Choose the best and serve it in the most profitable way.
Adults love numbers
The most important thing in any case is the results of the campaign. Therefore, the more impressive figures you collect for the project.
How many participants were at your event, how much coverage your viral campaign had in social networks, how many people found out about your initiative as a result, how many people went to your website and performed the necessary manipulation — all these are examples of really good figures for the case.
At the same time, it is important that the collected figures correspond to the stated tasks. Sometimes it happens that a participant talks about a task that, judging by the results presented, was not completed. For example, you indicate that the goal of your campaign was to increase the loyalty of factory workers aged 45 and over and in the end you give beautiful figures on the coverage of the campaign in Instagram. Something doesn't add up, does it?
Critical view
Finally, run through the application with a critical glance. Have you provided enough information for a stranger to draw conclusions about the goals, idea, and results of your campaign? Did you go too far into unnecessary details when describing the project? Did you provide too little or too much material?
If you feel that your eyes are already "blurred", then give your application to a person who is not familiar with you or is not aware of your project. After reading it, ask them to recount the essence of the case in their own words, to make sure that the application contains all the necessary information that you would like to convey to the jury.
Remember-the jury members usually consider several dozen applications a day. You need to make sure that in the few minutes that the jury member will devote to your project, they understand everything correctly and appreciate it.
