PRIA awards head: PR agencies must learn the ‘art’ of awards entry writing
Lee
The chair of the Public Relations Institute of Australia’s Golden Target Awards has warned that many good public relations campaigns are not being properly recognised due to a poor effort in the writing of awards entries.
Speaking to Mumbrella, as part of the call for entries for the 2014 awards Allison Lee said the industry needed to make sure their entry fully communicated the work of the PR campaign.
“I’ve been judging these awards for a long time and what you often see is a really great campaign but it is really poor entered,” said Lee, who is also managing director of Impact Communications. “Often you know its a good campaign but the judges can only go with what’s on the entry. It’s heartbreaking when you know it should do better but it has been let down by the entry.
Or maybe change the headline to… PRIA awards head: Mumbrella must learn the ‘art’ of sub-editing.
PR agencies must also learn to get certain articles published in certain media; horizontal mass market as well as niche publications. Align articles with smart use of back links for user guidance and of course seo and the right content that attracts the right punters. So many scatter-gun PR firms out there, not really being strategic, with their clients valuable marketing dollars.
as someone who works across both PR and advertising, this rings very true
PRs just aren’t used to fluffing, exagerrating, appropriating and otherwise tooting their own horns – out of fear of pissing off the journalists who’ve aided in their success.
any PR who brags about their media wins will soon find themselves on the end of a lot of dialtones
whereas ad agencies live and breath “salesmanship” aka perma-bullshit. Most of them couldn’t lie straight in bed.
Three rules to winning awards:
1) Must be able to prove tangible outcome (If not don’t even bother)
2) Must involve some type of social media or innovative touch (ie: not just press coverage)
3) The submission writer must sell it (The art of persuasion baby!)
In my experience:
– Most PR campaigns cannot be measured
– Most campaigns follow traditional stale formulas
– Most award entries are written by account executives (ie: amateurs)
Ahhh I see. Let’s not focus on the work for the client as much as we focus on how we enter that work into the awards.
“What we really looking for” is attention to detail.
Hahaha
Ralph, the Golden Target Awards are all about results! Strict guidelines on judging ensure we look for campaigns that provided clients with outcomes, not just outputs.
Scoop, PR campaigns are measurable – just evaluate them against the campaign goals rather than redundant metrics. You’re right – award winning campaign don’t follow formulas. We’re looking for innovation.
*campaigns