Winning awards will impact your business five ways
Public Relations
More Sales
Sales at higher prices
More employees
Employee pride
I will expand on these further on in this article. First, I want to explore the effort required to win.
The challenge is how to increase your odds of winning awards. A well run competition will ensure anonymity, meaning that the judges have no idea who is submitting the application. Most competitions require you to tell the story with a limited number of pictures and answer specific questions with a limited number of words.
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
PCBC Gold Nugget Merit Award | Withee Malcomb Architects / Oltmans Construction
We have photographed dozens of award winning projects and there are some key elements to getting great photographs. Here is my list of what can help lead to award winning photographs:
Know the award you want to win before photographing the project. This will drive key elements of what is and is not in the picture.
Have a story that you want to tell about the project.
Work with the photographer before the shoot to explain the story and the award requirements.
Listen to the photographer about their opinion on how to tell the story visually.
Communicate deadlines for submittal to get everyone on schedule.
Clean the space and be prepared to do more detailed cleaning during the shoot.
Stage the space with just the right props in the right places. This may mean setting up the space in a way that is not how it would be used on a daily basis.
Work closely with the photographer to stage the space. The photographer knows how the camera will “see” the space and can guide the arrangement of elements for the camera.
Lighting, lighting, lighting. There has been a lazy trend lately to just use available light for photography. I call this “real estate photography”. It is lifeless and does not accent the story being told, and most likely will not do justice to the project.
Photoshop the final touches. The photographer (or his editor) will be editing the images in photoshop. Plan for that time. While it is always best to get the shot right in camera, there will always be some things that must be done in post production.
Be Succinct
The written submission portion must be engaging, to the point, and not filled with hyperbolic BS. The judges are reading all the submissions. They will be fatigued. Complex writing with a bunch of BS really can turn them off. Test your readability. Write your copy in a word processor before pasting into the submission form. Then check how easy it is to read by using a readability checker like this one and try to get down to the 10th grade level or lower. Yes, I know we are all smarter than that. However, you want your content to be easy to read and engage the judges.
Try to reference the photographs in your copy. Tell the story of what is in the images. This will get the judges to connect the copy and images and get them to review your submission more thoroughly.
CEDIA Award | Audio Images / TK Theaters
Now for the Benefits
Public Relations and Social Media
An award is a great opportunity for PR. However it is not about the award. It is about the story you were telling to win the award. Tell that story and, oh by the way, this is an award winning project. The press and social media consumers see the “award winning” headline all the time. You won because of your story about a great project, tell that story.
More Sales at a Higher Price
My clients that win awards showcase the award with the photographs front and center in their lobbies and website. They do more than just show the trophy. They have a showcase about the project with the trophy. Some have even taken snippets of the contest submissions and professionally mounted the copy in the showcase. When a new customer comes into the office, there is a strong statement that “we do great work and we charge for it”. The showcases have their own stand-alone effect when clients are waiting or when there is an event.
Referrals are a great way of getting business. Build a wall mounted showcase with a copy of the trophy and present this to the customer whose project won the award. Your customer will show off how their project won an award via your company’s efforts. That means your company’s name is front and center and will generate referrals.
Employees
Pride and a sense of accomplishment are usually the number one employee motivation on most employee satisfaction surveys. Being on the “winning team” is exemplified with winning awards. Get copies of the trophy made and give those trophies to the team that created the project.
ASID Platinum Award | Wendy Ann Miller Interior Design
I have mentioned a couple of times about getting copies of the award. Contact the organization that held the competition and ask for the trophy company’s contact info.
Conclusion
Awards are a great way to show that your company does cool stuff. Have a story to tell. Let the pictures tell most of the story. Get your copy accurate and to the point. Most importantly, leverage the win to get more business and attract great employees.
Nobody knows how cool your project is until you photograph it and show it off.