WHAT IT TAKES TO WIN?

The Asia-Pacific Effie Awards identify and celebrate campaigns that have met or surpassed their goals. Within this, the written Brief of Effectiveness is the most important part of the entry, because it tells the story of your campaign development and demonstrates how the creative work led to strong results. It also details the competitive environment, the campaign’s objectives, and presents your evidence that the results you’re claiming were actually driven by your campaign.


Reviews of previous Effie winners have shown that they are:

• Direct. They present their story in an easy-to-follow style with a minimum of hyperbole. The word ‘story’ here is important: judges have limited time to read each entry, so those that grab and hold the judges’ attention will get the reading they deserve. Others may not.
  
  
• Persuasive. Many first-time competitors make the fatal mistake of assuming that their story and their results speak for themselves. They don’t. Your job as the author is to present a well-argued case, a bit like a lawyer does in court. This means convincing judges that your thinking was smart, rather than simply saying it was smart.
  
  
• Concise. You have about 1500 words to tell your story, so choose them well. And make sure they fit within the space provided in the form. Entries with text that exceeds the spacing restrictions will be disqualified. No exceptions.
  
  
• Grounded in relevant context. Effie judges are smart, senior, experienced people – but that doesn’t mean they know your product category, your brand’s situation, or the idiosyncrasies of your market as well as you do. The context in which you present your challenge, objectives and results is what helps the judges both appreciate the difficulties your brand faced and better gauge the scope of what you achieved.
  
  
• Clear and easy to read – in both content and form. Cases should read as if they were written for an audience of intelligent, somewhat skeptical human beings – after all, that’s who’s going to be judging. Also, bear in mind that judges may reduce scores on entries they find to be exceptionally difficult to read. Do not use any type sizes smaller than 10 points. It’s too hard on the eyes.

Additional tips:

• It seems obvious, but be sure to complete each section of the entry form. Leaving any section blank will result in disqualification of your entry. But it’s not just about filling the space – judges have been known to mark severely entries they felt didn’t do justice to the questions posed in the brief. So this tip also means: answer completely.
  
• Make sure your campaign’s results link directly to your stated objectives. If you had a sales objective, the judges will expect to see a sales result. Additional or ‘bonus’ results not tied to objectives (e.g., winning a creative award) can help convince judges your campaign was strong but will not make up for a lack of business results.
  
• Creative materials must directly relate to your strategic objectives and results, as described or outlined in the Briefs of Effectiveness. The selection of which creative examples to include in your entry should not be made hurriedly or casually. It’s really only worth including the best examples, meaning those that best deliver on your creative idea and those that most drove the business outcome, even if those may not be the sexy TVC’s. Similarly, there’s not much to be gained by submitting six examples (e.g., poster, DM piece, print ad, etc.) of exactly the same headline.
  
• Be sure you understand the judging process (detailed below) and how the various elements in the Brief of Effectiveness are expected to link together. Entries that read as if the various answers have nothing to do with each other will be scored accordingly.
  
• Don’t wait until the last minute to complete your entry. The more time you give yourself, the more time you’ll have to be self-critical. After all, this is a competition – you must assume your counterparts at the other agencies are just as smart as you and their work just as good as yours. The difference between your entry and theirs may well come down to the time you put into making your argument more persuasive.
  
• It’s also a great idea to get a few people not involved with your campaign to read and reality-check your entry before you submit it. And please, proofread your entry carefully before sending.