How to win a creative award - it's (almost) all in the wrapping

Eve is an independent consultant with over 25 years of experience in Media and Marketing (image supplied)

So, to clarify what I mean when I say “wrapping”, it is the entry itself - a truly well-crafted piece of writing, supported with a great video, delivering immersive storytelling, unpacking great insight, setting a societal or category tension, and delivering a spectacular solve (with the business results to prove it), and last but not least, Following the entry criteria.

The “wrapping” definitely helps to give a great piece of work the best chance at winning, and even gives mediocre work a shot at a short list.

Every slick, multi-award winning agency knows this, and are practised masters.

The gold standard in wrapping

But for me there is a more interesting and sustainable lesson in “wrapping well”, and that is in the doing.

Having been privileged to experience judging on two International Juries, Cannes and Mad Stars, I know what the gold-standard in “wrapping” looks like, but the insight on how important it is to experience putting the entries together first-hand came to me just recently.

I was privileged to be part of a team to gather, assess and mentor teams to curate their entries from across Africa for the Loeries Awards on behalf of one of my biggest clients.

The process and experience of actually entering work for these teams, to the standards they expect at international award ceremonies, not only gave their entries a better chance to win an award now, but no doubt will elevate the work these young talents from across Africa will do in the future.

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Learning to wrap

In my own creative process, I am constantly seeking out inspiration from great campaigns or ideas, and I find that the more I immerse myself in these, the more prolific my ideation becomes.

Granted many of my ideas fizzle out and die a quick embarrassing death, but my point is that it is the practice of understanding what good looks like that makes me better.

The “learning to wrap” part of award entries is exactly what this is, and where the “gold lies”.

I am guessing that creative agencies have the highest percentage of staff that can do the “award wrapping” as this is their bread and butter.

But then why are there not more accomplished “wrappers” in client teams, in media owner organisations, in media agencies?
I would hazard that it is because most of the time one poor person gets handed the task, or we all look to the creative agencies to do our “wrapping” for us.

Skill we should all inspire to attain

Of course the 2-minute “blow me off my chair and make me laugh or make me cry” video should probably still be their domain, but the actual skill we acquire through the heavy-lifting to curate and craft that entry into a master short-story should be something we all aspire to attain.

It is a frustrating, painful, hair-pulling, paper crumpling, computer bashing and multi-version writing exercise, but it is also incredibly rewarding, and lets you truly see into the work – the good, the bad and the “oh dear that is really not an award winning entry is it?”.

It shows you where the holes are, where you should have pushed it further, where you should have collected inspiring footage, and it shouts at you that you should have done your due diligence to track all the meaningful results upfront.

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A combination, not one person

It also shows you that an award-winning campaign is never the work of one person, because it a combination of the strategy, the execution, the creative, and the business results that come together to create magic.

All of these elements need to be masterfully captured to form the “wrapping” for your award-winning campaign.

But the truly sustainable outcome of this exercise is that once you know what it takes, you can never unlearn it.

If you are mindful and diligent, you can use this knowledge to make any great campaign idea better, and even sort your “wrapping” out before the rush.

Build an army of wrappers

I think each and every agency, media owner and client should consider building an army of young “wrappers” through mentorship, exposure to what looks great, and throwing them into the “award entry writing deep end” so they can not only help you win awards now, but also become the next generation of great award-worthy campaign creators.