It's awards season again. The deadlines are piling up like snowdrifts in a Midwest winter, and somewhere, in conference rooms and Zoom calls across the industry, a group of weary judges is bracing for the storm.
They’ll be squinting at PDFs late into the night, powering through caffeine and eye strain, sifting through one entry after another. And here’s what most of those entries will get wrong: they’ll assume the work speaks for itself. They’ll throw numbers at the judges like confetti, expecting them to be dazzled. They’ll pile on jargon and inside baseball, forgetting that the people on the other side of the screen weren’t there.
Great work deserves great storytelling. If you want that trophy, you’ve got to do more than present results—you’ve got to make the judges care.
Set the Stage—Give the Judges a Reason to Care
Every campaign has a beginning. A spark. A moment when the challenge became clear, when the stakes rose, when something had to be done. That’s where your story starts.
Sales were slumping. Not a slow drip, but a sharp drop—the kind that keeps executives up at night. A major competitor had just launched a nationwide campaign making sure their name was everywhere. Your client wasn’t just trying to stay competitive, they were fighting for survival.
Or maybe auto sales across the country were slumping, and your brand had to convince hesitant buyers to commit to a purchase in an era where rideshares and monthly subscriptions were becoming the norm. Or perhaps your client was launching a new product in a market that had lost faith. Your job wasn’t just to introduce a product—it was to rebuild belief.
That’s the context. That’s what separates a list of results from a compelling case. The judges need to understand why this campaign mattered—why it wasn't just another brief but a mission. If they don't feel the weight of the challenge, they won't feel the impact of the results.
Get an Outsider's Perspective
If you've spent months, maybe years, working on a campaign, you can't see it with fresh eyes. You just can't.
That's why most advertising award entries read like they were written for an audience that already knows the whole backstory. They breeze past the problem, drown in the details, or assume the judges have been tracking the category as closely as the team who built the campaign.
They haven't.
Before you hit submit, put your entry in front of someone who wasn't involved in the work. A different team. A marketing lead from another vertical. Someone who can call out the places where you’re skipping over the important stuff or getting lost in the weeds.
If they don't get it, neither will the judges.
Cut the Fluff—Only Keep What Matters
There's an old newsroom rule: if you're in love with a sentence, cut it. The same applies here.
Every campaign has elements the team poured their heart into. The activation that took months of planning. The creative execution that went through 20 painful rounds of revisions. The social component that felt like a brilliant stroke of insight.
But here's the truth: if it doesn't serve the larger story, let it go.
Award entries aren't about proving how much work you did. They're about proving impact. If a piece of the campaign isn't essential to the "why” and "how” of your success, it's dead weight. The best entries aren't the ones that cram in the most detail—they're the ones that get to the point, clean and clear.
Give It a Pulse—Make the Judges Feel Something
The best award entries aren't just strategic. They're human.
Your campaign wasn't just about moving products. It was about making people feel something, about shifting perception, about breaking through a wall of doubt, distraction, or indifference.
Your brand wasn't just launching a new sneaker—it was proving that a legacy company could still be relevant to a younger generation that had long since written it off.
Your client wasn't just introducing a financial product—it was stepping into an industry that people had stopped trusting and trying to prove it was different.
That's what judges want to see. Not just numbers but meaning. Give them a reason to nod, smile, and feel something beyond the usual metrics.
If you can do that, they'll remember your entry long after they've closed the file.
Follow the Rules, For the Love of All That's Holy
This one should go without saying, yet every year, great entries are tossed aside because they violate the most basic guidelines.
Too many words? Gone. Wrong format? Disqualified. Key section missing? Not even considered.
Judges are looking for reasons to eliminate entries quickly to get to the ones that rise to the top. Don't make their job easy.
The Bottom Line
Winning advertising awards isn't just about the work—it's about making the case for why your work deserves recognition. Judges want to be excited. They want to find entries that spark something in them.
So tell them a story worth believing in. Give them a reason to root for you.
And if you don’t win this year? Take it in stride. A great campaign is bigger than an award. But if you sharpen your storytelling, refine your strategy, and come back stronger next time—you might be the entry they can't ignore.