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Let me tell you about a question I get asked every single autumn.
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Somebody says to me,"Charlotte, we've got a project that did really well.
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Should we enter it into the Design Effectiveness Awards?" And then usually a beat later,"But what do we actually get out of it?" And it's a brilliant question, and the honest answer is if you enter, win, and then sit back waiting for the phone to ring with new clients, you're gonna get almost nothing.
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But if you know how to use it, an effectiveness award can be one of the most valuable things you ever put your name to.
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So that's what we're unpacking in today's episode.
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Let's get into it Hi, and welcome to the Authority Builder podcast.
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I'm Charlotte Ellis Maldary, founder of Kaffeen, and this is the show for consultants, agency owners, and experts who want to be known for what they do best and win better work because of it.
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Today's episode is for anybody in design, branding, packaging, product or innovation who's ever wondered whether awards are worth the time, the money and the effort.
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And I'm gonna focus in on one award in particular, the Design Business Association's Design Effectiveness Awards, because I think it's the most commercially useful award in our industry.
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And I'll be honest about where it falls short too.
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But first of all, a bit of quick context.
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my background is brand and packaging design.
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I've worked in-house at big brand agencies and at tech startups, on the marketing and new business side, and I've written a lot of the entries for agencies I worked at and, for other clients as a consultant.
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Also, for brand side people too.
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I've had entries I was convinced would win that didn't, and I'll come back to what that taught me.
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so this is coming from somebody who has been in the trenches with these things.
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So let's start with the myth.
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The myth of win and they will come.
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So a lot of agencies treat awards like a lottery ticket.
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You enter, you hope, and if you win, you assume new business will follow.
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Someone will see your name on a list and they'll think,"Oh, they're brilliant," and get in touch, but that almost never happens, not with this award and, honestly, not with most of them.
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Award bodies are generally not great at promoting their winners.
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The winners pages don't rank well in search.
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No one's sitting on a Tuesday afternoon browsing the effectiveness winners list looking for an agency.
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And traditional PR doesn't work in the same way it used to.
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So even if you win and a press release goes out, you're probably not gonna get that many people seeing it.
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So if that's your expectation, then I recommend you save your money.
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But here's the thing, the value is never in the trophy.
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The value is in what the award proves and what that proof lets you do next.
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So now we're gonna come on to what makes this award different, and before we get to the benefits, it's worth understanding why this award is different from most.
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The Design Business Association's Design Effectiveness Awards have been running since 1989, and unlike most creative awards, you're not judged against your peers.
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There are no categories.
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There aren't even a set number of winners that happen.
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You're judged against your own objectives.
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So the question is...
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question isn't, is this the most beautiful thing anybody made this year?
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The question is, did this design do what it was supposed to do, and can you prove it?
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The judges aren't other agency people admiring each other's craft.
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They're people who commission design for a living from global brands through to startups.
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In other words, they look a lot like your clients, and they may even be your clients.
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And you can go take a look at who's on the board of judges this year.
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I'm actually gonna be interviewing the chairman of the board of judges, this week, and I'm excited to bring that episode to you.
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I think it's gonna be out towards the back end of next week, so mid-October So like I said, the judges look a lot like your clients, and that changes everything about how you can use a win.
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So let's get into what the real benefits are, talk about the return on investment, and here is what an effectiveness award can actually do for your business.
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Even if it's not the D&AD Design Effectiveness, if it's an IPA Effectiveness, if it's an, an Effie Award, there's lots of them around the world.
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it's a, a field that they're normally seen as the most superior of the awards available to creative agencies because of the rigor that goes into them So what's the return on investment?
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And here is what an effectiveness award can do for your business.
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Number one, it's proof in your client's language.
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Here's something I've said to more than one creative director,"Clients don't hire us because they want to look better.
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They hire us because they want to make money, more money, or save money, or reduce risk.
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Looking better is how we get them there." An effectiveness award translates your work into the language your buyer already speaks.
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Sales growth, cost savings, investment made, investment raised, jobs created, market share growth.
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That's what the person signing off your invoice cares about, and it's independently verified, which is means it's not just you saying it.
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Number two, it shifts your focus from peers to payers.
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This is a big one for me.
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and it's a mindset thing.
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So much of our industry as creative agencies is hung up on what other designers think, other creatives think.
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We worry about our peers' opinion, the industry press, the cool factor.
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But your peers don't pay you.
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An effectiveness award is the antidote to that.
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It lets you say with total confidence,"I don't need you to like it.
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It worked.
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Here's the evidence." I've watched clients completely change how they show up for their own businesses, especially in terms of marketing and new business once they have their heads around that.
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They stop apologizing for commercial work and start leading with the results instead because they're not arguable.
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Number three, it gets you through procurement.
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If you want to work with big organizations, this matters.
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Large companies have marketing procurement teams, and their job is to reduce the risk of hiring an agency.
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An effectiveness award is one of the few things that procurement accepts as genuine proof of return on investment.
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For some rosters, it's close to a basic requirement.
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So if you've ever wondered why you're not getting through the door at bigger brands, this could be part of the answer.
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Number four, it opens doors you couldn't open before, and this is where the real value is, and it's where most winners stop short.
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A winning case study gives you a credible, specific reason to reach out to people.
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For example, competitors of the client you won with who are facing the same challenge and haven't solved it yet, businesses in adjacent sectors where you can say,"We did this in one category, and here's what it could look like in yours." Or investors who back the kind of businesses that you help because your work reduces the risk in their investments.
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That's not a cold pitch.
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That's"Here's the evidence of what we did.
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Would it be useful to talk?" It's a completely different conversation.
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And then number five, the judges.
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This one's a bit of an insider tip.
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After the results come out, I really encourage you to write to the judges and thank them for taking the time to be part of the jury and judge your work.
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It sounds simple, but those judges are senior people at the kinds of organizations you'd love to work with, and a genuine thank you often turns into a conversation, and sometimes that conversation is with somebody you'd otherwise never have got in front of.
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Six, it strengthens the client relationship.
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Entries are made jointly with your client, and they have to sign them off.
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That means a win is a shared win.
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It gives your client something to celebrate internally, a story to tell their board, and proof that their investment in design paid off.
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And here's something I see a lot.
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When a client gets investment or grows quickly, the agency that helped them can get pushed into the background.
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An effectiveness award is a positive reason to reconnect.
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You're not asking for credit, you're offering them a win Number seven, one entry used 100 times.
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The work of building an entry gives you a rigorous evidence-backed case study that becomes website content, a section of your credentials deck, sales conversations, LinkedIn posts, a newsletter, a talk, a chapter in a book.
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Done properly, you're gonna be using that story for years in a way you couldn't have done if you were just telling an aesthetic story.
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Eight, it builds a habit that changes your business.
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This is the one I care about most.
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The discipline of proving effectiveness is hard.
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It's sometimes painful even.
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But once you've done it, you start building it into every project.
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You set clearer objectives at the start.
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You ask clients for data.
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You benchmark your work, and over time, everything you say about your work stops being opinion and starts being evidence, and that's what real authority looks like So I wanna get now into what I learned from the entry that didn't win.
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I promised I'd come back to this.
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A few years ago, I wrote an entry for a client that I was convinced would win.
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It was brilliant work, brilliant story.
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It didn't win anything, and I was furious.
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The feedback was that there were no prior metrics, and that's a real challenge because when you've built something from scratch, a new product, a new brand, there's no before to compare against.
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What I learned is that you can still make that case, but you have to work harder at it.
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You have to benchmark against the market.
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You show the context.
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You explain what success looked like at the start and how you got there, and you make sure you've got recent data because the rules ask for evidence that's up to date.
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So if your work is brand new or genuinely innovative, don't rule yourself out.
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Just know that the story needs more careful building.
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So let me answer the question: Is it worth it?
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It's worth it if you're going to use it.
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If you'll put the case study to work, reach out to the people it's relevant to, if you use it with procurement, and if you let it shape how you talk about your business, then yes, absolutely.
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It's not worth it if you're gonna file the certificate and wait.
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And here's a few practical things to know.
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If you're a Design Business Association member, you get one free entry.
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Free entries can't be deferred, so if you don't use it, you're gonna lose it.
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You don't have to buy a ticket to the awards event to win.
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Shortlisted entries are told in advance, and being shortlisted means you've won at least a bronze.
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That makes it different from quite a lot of awards that are run as a business model.
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Your entry needs some evidence from the last couple of years, but the project itself can have launched any period at any time.
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In fact, the DBA really values work that's delivered results over a longer period.
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And finally, you submit two versions, a confidential one for the judges who are under NDA and a publication version.
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So if your client is nervous about sharing numbers, there's a way through.
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And just to let you know, if all this still piques your curiosity, the deadline for this year is 5:00 PM on Tuesday the 1st of December.
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So if you've got a project that you know worked, but you're not sure how to prove it, or you just don't have the time to write the entry, that's something I can help you with.
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We look at the evidence you've got, find the gaps, build an entry that makes the strongest possible case, and more importantly, I'll help you make sure that once you've got it, you actually use it.
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You can book a call with me at the link below to discuss an entry that you've got in mind or just drop me a message on LinkedIn.
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Thanks so much for listening.
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And if this was useful, please do share it with somebody else who's sitting on a project that deserves to be recognized.
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I'll see you next time on the Authority Builder Podcast.
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Bye for now
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Let me tell you about a question I get asked every single autumn.
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Somebody says to me,"Charlotte, we've got a project that did really well.
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Should we enter it into the Design Effectiveness Awards?" And then usually a beat later,"But what do we actually get out of it?" And it's a brilliant question, and the honest answer is if you enter, win, and then sit back waiting for the phone to ring with new clients, you're gonna get almost nothing.
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But if you know how to use it, an effectiveness award can be one of the most valuable things you ever put your name to.
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So that's what we're unpacking in today's episode.
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Let's get into it Hi, and welcome to the Authority Builder podcast.
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I'm Charlotte Ellis Maldary, founder of Kaffeen, and this is the show for consultants, agency owners, and experts who want to be known for what they do best and win better work because of it.
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Today's episode is for anybody in design, branding, packaging, product or innovation who's ever wondered whether awards are worth the time, the money and the effort.
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And I'm gonna focus in on one award in particular, the Design Business Association's Design Effectiveness Awards, because I think it's the most commercially useful award in our industry.
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And I'll be honest about where it falls short too.
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But first of all, a bit of quick context.
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my background is brand and packaging design.
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I've worked in-house at big brand agencies and at tech startups, on the marketing and new business side, and I've written a lot of the entries for agencies I worked at and, for other clients as a consultant.
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Also, for brand side people too.
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I've had entries I was convinced would win that didn't, and I'll come back to what that taught me.
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so this is coming from somebody who has been in the trenches with these things.
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So let's start with the myth.
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The myth of win and they will come.
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So a lot of agencies treat awards like a lottery ticket.
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You enter, you hope, and if you win, you assume new business will follow.
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Someone will see your name on a list and they'll think,"Oh, they're brilliant," and get in touch, but that almost never happens, not with this award and, honestly, not with most of them.
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Award bodies are generally not great at promoting their winners.
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The winners pages don't rank well in search.
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No one's sitting on a Tuesday afternoon browsing the effectiveness winners list looking for an agency.
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And traditional PR doesn't work in the same way it used to.
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So even if you win and a press release goes out, you're probably not gonna get that many people seeing it.
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So if that's your expectation, then I recommend you save your money.
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But here's the thing, the value is never in the trophy.
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The value is in what the award proves and what that proof lets you do next.
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So now we're gonna come on to what makes this award different, and before we get to the benefits, it's worth understanding why this award is different from most.
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The Design Business Association's Design Effectiveness Awards have been running since 1989, and unlike most creative awards, you're not judged against your peers.
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There are no categories.
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There aren't even a set number of winners that happen.
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You're judged against your own objectives.
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So the question is...
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question isn't, is this the most beautiful thing anybody made this year?
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The question is, did this design do what it was supposed to do, and can you prove it?
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The judges aren't other agency people admiring each other's craft.
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They're people who commission design for a living from global brands through to startups.
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In other words, they look a lot like your clients, and they may even be your clients.
00:04:15.350 --> 00:04:18.360
And you can go take a look at who's on the board of judges this year.
00:04:18.399 --> 00:04:25.050
I'm actually gonna be interviewing the chairman of the board of judges, this week, and I'm excited to bring that episode to you.
00:04:25.050 --> 00:04:35.360
I think it's gonna be out towards the back end of next week, so mid-October So like I said, the judges look a lot like your clients, and that changes everything about how you can use a win.
00:04:35.860 --> 00:04:43.399
So let's get into what the real benefits are, talk about the return on investment, and here is what an effectiveness award can actually do for your business.
00:04:43.680 --> 00:04:51.970
Even if it's not the D&AD Design Effectiveness, if it's an IPA Effectiveness, if it's an, an Effie Award, there's lots of them around the world.
00:04:52.079 --> 00:05:09.350
it's a, a field that they're normally seen as the most superior of the awards available to creative agencies because of the rigor that goes into them So what's the return on investment?
00:05:09.410 --> 00:05:12.580
And here is what an effectiveness award can do for your business.
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Number one, it's proof in your client's language.
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Here's something I've said to more than one creative director,"Clients don't hire us because they want to look better.
00:05:22.600 --> 00:05:27.699
They hire us because they want to make money, more money, or save money, or reduce risk.
00:05:28.020 --> 00:05:35.140
Looking better is how we get them there." An effectiveness award translates your work into the language your buyer already speaks.
00:05:35.509 --> 00:05:42.550
Sales growth, cost savings, investment made, investment raised, jobs created, market share growth.
00:05:42.990 --> 00:05:50.250
That's what the person signing off your invoice cares about, and it's independently verified, which is means it's not just you saying it.
00:05:50.890 --> 00:05:55.120
Number two, it shifts your focus from peers to payers.
00:05:55.620 --> 00:05:56.590
This is a big one for me.
00:05:57.090 --> 00:05:58.340
and it's a mindset thing.
00:05:58.340 --> 00:06:04.680
So much of our industry as creative agencies is hung up on what other designers think, other creatives think.
00:06:05.230 --> 00:06:09.009
We worry about our peers' opinion, the industry press, the cool factor.
00:06:09.120 --> 00:06:10.870
But your peers don't pay you.
00:06:11.370 --> 00:06:13.629
An effectiveness award is the antidote to that.
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It lets you say with total confidence,"I don't need you to like it.
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It worked.
00:06:18.240 --> 00:06:28.759
Here's the evidence." I've watched clients completely change how they show up for their own businesses, especially in terms of marketing and new business once they have their heads around that.
00:06:29.230 --> 00:06:35.710
They stop apologizing for commercial work and start leading with the results instead because they're not arguable.
00:06:36.449 --> 00:06:38.810
Number three, it gets you through procurement.
00:06:39.300 --> 00:06:42.280
If you want to work with big organizations, this matters.
00:06:42.759 --> 00:06:48.660
Large companies have marketing procurement teams, and their job is to reduce the risk of hiring an agency.
00:06:49.470 --> 00:06:55.520
An effectiveness award is one of the few things that procurement accepts as genuine proof of return on investment.
00:06:56.120 --> 00:06:58.710
For some rosters, it's close to a basic requirement.
00:06:59.140 --> 00:07:04.030
So if you've ever wondered why you're not getting through the door at bigger brands, this could be part of the answer.
00:07:04.530 --> 00:07:11.780
Number four, it opens doors you couldn't open before, and this is where the real value is, and it's where most winners stop short.
00:07:12.310 --> 00:07:17.290
A winning case study gives you a credible, specific reason to reach out to people.
00:07:17.650 --> 00:07:36.180
For example, competitors of the client you won with who are facing the same challenge and haven't solved it yet, businesses in adjacent sectors where you can say,"We did this in one category, and here's what it could look like in yours." Or investors who back the kind of businesses that you help because your work reduces the risk in their investments.
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That's not a cold pitch.
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That's"Here's the evidence of what we did.
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Would it be useful to talk?" It's a completely different conversation.
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And then number five, the judges.
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This one's a bit of an insider tip.
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After the results come out, I really encourage you to write to the judges and thank them for taking the time to be part of the jury and judge your work.
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It sounds simple, but those judges are senior people at the kinds of organizations you'd love to work with, and a genuine thank you often turns into a conversation, and sometimes that conversation is with somebody you'd otherwise never have got in front of.
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Six, it strengthens the client relationship.
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Entries are made jointly with your client, and they have to sign them off.
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That means a win is a shared win.
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It gives your client something to celebrate internally, a story to tell their board, and proof that their investment in design paid off.
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And here's something I see a lot.
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When a client gets investment or grows quickly, the agency that helped them can get pushed into the background.
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An effectiveness award is a positive reason to reconnect.
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You're not asking for credit, you're offering them a win Number seven, one entry used 100 times.
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The work of building an entry gives you a rigorous evidence-backed case study that becomes website content, a section of your credentials deck, sales conversations, LinkedIn posts, a newsletter, a talk, a chapter in a book.
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Done properly, you're gonna be using that story for years in a way you couldn't have done if you were just telling an aesthetic story.
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Eight, it builds a habit that changes your business.
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This is the one I care about most.
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The discipline of proving effectiveness is hard.
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It's sometimes painful even.
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But once you've done it, you start building it into every project.
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You set clearer objectives at the start.
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You ask clients for data.
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You benchmark your work, and over time, everything you say about your work stops being opinion and starts being evidence, and that's what real authority looks like So I wanna get now into what I learned from the entry that didn't win.
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I promised I'd come back to this.
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A few years ago, I wrote an entry for a client that I was convinced would win.
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It was brilliant work, brilliant story.
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It didn't win anything, and I was furious.
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The feedback was that there were no prior metrics, and that's a real challenge because when you've built something from scratch, a new product, a new brand, there's no before to compare against.
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What I learned is that you can still make that case, but you have to work harder at it.
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You have to benchmark against the market.
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You show the context.
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You explain what success looked like at the start and how you got there, and you make sure you've got recent data because the rules ask for evidence that's up to date.
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So if your work is brand new or genuinely innovative, don't rule yourself out.
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Just know that the story needs more careful building.
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So let me answer the question: Is it worth it?
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It's worth it if you're going to use it.
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If you'll put the case study to work, reach out to the people it's relevant to, if you use it with procurement, and if you let it shape how you talk about your business, then yes, absolutely.
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It's not worth it if you're gonna file the certificate and wait.
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And here's a few practical things to know.
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If you're a Design Business Association member, you get one free entry.
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Free entries can't be deferred, so if you don't use it, you're gonna lose it.
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You don't have to buy a ticket to the awards event to win.
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Shortlisted entries are told in advance, and being shortlisted means you've won at least a bronze.
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That makes it different from quite a lot of awards that are run as a business model.
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Your entry needs some evidence from the last couple of years, but the project itself can have launched any period at any time.
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In fact, the DBA really values work that's delivered results over a longer period.
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And finally, you submit two versions, a confidential one for the judges who are under NDA and a publication version.
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So if your client is nervous about sharing numbers, there's a way through.
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And just to let you know, if all this still piques your curiosity, the deadline for this year is 5:00 PM on Tuesday the 1st of December.
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So if you've got a project that you know worked, but you're not sure how to prove it, or you just don't have the time to write the entry, that's something I can help you with.
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We look at the evidence you've got, find the gaps, build an entry that makes the strongest possible case, and more importantly, I'll help you make sure that once you've got it, you actually use it.
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You can book a call with me at the link below to discuss an entry that you've got in mind or just drop me a message on LinkedIn.
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Thanks so much for listening.
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And if this was useful, please do share it with somebody else who's sitting on a project that deserves to be recognized.
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I'll see you next time on the Authority Builder Podcast.
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Bye for now
