Entry Kit

This section is the foundation stone of the paper. Start with a bang, not a whimper.

Context is king

This is your chance to show the judges where the business stood prior to comms and, importantly, the reasons why.

Use historical data to paint a picture

Many of the best papers clearly show business/brand performance across time and set the stage for a shot-in-the arm from comms.

Be as specific as possible

Don’t just talk to broad societal issues like a cost of living crisis. If you do, show how these specifically impacted the business. 4C’s is a good framework to interrogate: consumer, category, company and culture. The 4 C’s can often be a good way to paint a picture of what you were facing. Whether from increased competitor activity or category decline; consumer behaviour or perception changes; a burning platform or opportunity at a company level or larger societal forces bearing down on you. Or a combination of all of them.

Summarise in a snappy challenge

Create a one sentence summary of the challenge that you were trying to take on, so the judges have a crystal-clear picture of what you’re trying to take on.

Demonstrate degree of difficulty

Paint a picture of how hard the challenge was to achieve. Help the judges understand that this was no easy task. 

Distinguish between business, marketing, brand & comms objectives.

Provide a clear ‘waterfall’ of metrics that start with business or organisational outcomes and flows down to marketing and communications objectives.

Here are some tangible examples* of metrics – by no means exhaustive or applicable to all cases:

Comms metrics

• Spontaneous or prompted campaign awareness, recall,
• Communications diagnostics: message take out, attitudes to the comms
• Popularity/fame/social discourse
• Branding scores Brand metrics
• Spontaneous or prompted brand awareness
• Brand perception metrics
• Funnel metrics: Aware, Consider, Purchase, Recommend

Marketing/Behavioural metrics

• Penetration/Purchase
• Frequency
• Weight of purchase/Basket size
• Retention/Life time value
• Conversion
• Advocacy/recommendation
• Behaviour change (Actual much better than claimed) Business/End-result metrics
• Value and volume sales
• Value and volume share
• Revenue
• Profitability
• Outcome metrics (e.g death on roads)

Provide context or benchmarks

Showing these results in context is hugely helpful: for example vs previous campaigns, business performance or competitor results.

Don’t exceed the number allocated, but equally don’t feel like you need to pad the section out by searching for 3 objectives where one is sufficient.

Less is more when it comes to objectives. Keep them punchy and pertinent.

Map them to the challenge: keep that symmetry

Explain why you’ve selected the metrics and map them to the challenge you’ve set out. Random metrics stand out like sore thumb.

Quantify them as much as possible

Show specific KPI’s that were set. It makes it much easier for judges to assess success later.

It is often helpful to show the absolute increase desired as well as the percentage increase this represents.

Show how they help address the challenge and unlock the solution.

Be ruthless. Highlight only those insights that are pertinent to the task at hand.

Sometimes they’ll be earth-shattering, sometimes they’ll just be the right thing to do.

Of course, we all want unlock that never-seen-before insight. That’s a rarity.

In the absence of that, just show how your insights were rock solid and led to the right solution.

Define your audience

Who they are, why they’re important and how they think & act.

Look to the 4C’s again

Your insights are likely to come from these areas or a combination of them. Perhaps a category zag, a rich consumer insight or a hidden product truth.

Backed by data

This can be your own proprietary research or broader stuff. Whatever the case, make sure it’s robust and quote/footnote.

A simple, snappy summary of what fuelled the solution.

This is the set up for the next part of the paper: distilling your insight(s) into the key build or idea that leads directly to the comms solution.

Show a direct connection between insights and creative approach.

Don’t just unfurl the creative work and assume the judges will make the connection on your behalf.

Demonstrate how the creative solution helped stand out from the crowd.

Judges will have subjective opinions about your creative solution. Make sure that you highlight all the reasons why it was brilliant. You might even want to talk about options that were discarded or competitor campaigns that it trumped.

Show why the channel strategy is right and a good use of resources.

Again, show the link between insight and comms approach. Given the variety of choices available, show how your solution gave the brand maximum bang for its buck.

Demonstrate the ‘path’ it was meant to take your audience on, showing how it would drive the changes and meet the objectives that you’ve set out.

Demonstrate learning and optimisation along the way, showing how you adapted and improved as time went by.

Detail your media and creative spend – actual, not ratecard.

And don’t worry if it’s sizeable or slim – you can use the results to show how, irrespective, it was a worthwhile investment.

Mirror your objectives.

Keep the symmetry and show how the results meet the objectives.

Be as clear and compelling as possible.

Visuals and verbals work well together. Restate your objective and show your results verbally, then ram it home with a killer chart, often showing pre-campaign benchmark, target and actual result.

Make it as legible and clearly signposted as possible.

Remind judges of the context

Apparently small changes may not just be difficult but very valuable. Conversely, if it is relatively easy to achieve significant growth in your category, explain why yours is remarkable.

Share can often be more compelling than sales

In commercial cases, share immediately takes category dynamics out of the equation and shows performance relatively to your competitive set.

New learnings or bonus features win plaudits

Judges are looking for interesting ways of calibrating success. Equally, if there are some bonus results that weren’t part of your core objectives, then show them off

Don’t underestimate the importance of this section!

Many papers have been torpedoed for not sufficiently discounting the contribution of other variables.

Judges value thoughtful answers here.

Show that you’ve carefully considered what else could be in play: from seasonality to price/distribution to competitor activity. The more you eliminate, the stronger your case becomes.

Be thorough and candid.

Eagle-eyed judges will be looking for obvious omissions and punishing you for them.