If this is you
We enter and we never win
A large number of good firms are in exactly this position. They enter, they do decent work, nothing comes back and after three years of it somebody quietly stops putting entries in.
What is usually happening
In our experience the work is rarely the problem. Four things account for most of what we see, and all four happen before anyone starts writing.
- The wrong project went in. A better one existed in the same firm that year, and nobody compared them against the published criteria first.
- The second-best story got told. Right project, wrong angle. The strongest thing about it was in a report nobody reopened.
- A scored criterion got a thin answer. Judges score criterion by criterion. Being wonderful on three and silent on the fourth loses to a competent entry that covered all four.
- The entry overclaimed and a judge noticed. One overstated sentence and a practitioner quietly discounts everything else in the submission.
Firms usually believe they lose on the writing. Writing does lose entries, and a dull or confusing answer will cost you marks. But in our experience the larger part is settled earlier, in the choosing. Which project, which angle, which evidence. By the time anybody opens a document, a good deal of the result is already set.
What would actually change it
Better prose on its own will not do it. What changes the result is a cold look at which of your projects the evidence supports best, an honest account of which criterion is weakest and the three or four facts that would fix it while there is still time to go and get them. Then the writing, done properly.
That is the whole product, and it is why the first thing you receive is the case rather than the copy.
A fair warning
Sometimes the answer is that this year’s projects are not strong enough for the category you have in mind, and the honest recommendation is to enter a different category or wait a year. You will be told that plainly rather than sold four submissions.
The $250 trial is the cheapest way to find out which of those two situations you are in.
Start with two answers.
Send an award you are actually entering and whatever project material you already have. You get two complete answers, the case we would make, the questions we would send your team and the claims that one more fact would unlock.
Credited in full if you go ahead. If you read it and walk away, you owe nothing further.