WEBVTT
00:00:42.370 --> 00:00:44.971
We're a little time poor and not exactly cash rich.
00:00:45.304 --> 00:00:47.859
That's a line from an email I received recently.
00:00:48.410 --> 00:01:01.742
It came from a client, the brand owner, whose agency wanted to enter their project for a design effectiveness award, and she followed it up with the question everyone is really asking: What would be required from us in terms of time, input, and information?
00:01:02.716 --> 00:01:05.552
I love that email because it's honest, and it deserves an honest answer.
00:01:05.581 --> 00:01:07.518
So that's what today's episode is.
00:01:07.822 --> 00:01:10.516
Real numbers, real time, and what it actually takes.
00:01:11.216 --> 00:01:14.252
Hello, and welcome back to the Authority Builder podcast.
00:01:14.295 --> 00:01:20.742
I'm Charlotte Ellis Maldari, and this is episode two of my short series on the DBA Design Effectiveness Awards.
00:01:21.549 --> 00:01:25.472
In the last episode, I talked about why these awards are different from every other design award.
00:01:25.924 --> 00:01:29.587
They judge whether the work worked, not just how it looks.
00:01:30.058 --> 00:01:32.245
If you missed it, go back today and have a listen.
00:01:32.944 --> 00:01:34.026
Today is a practical one.
00:01:34.442 --> 00:01:39.484
I'm gonna break the cost down into three parts: the money, the client's time, and your agency's time.
00:01:40.133 --> 00:01:46.655
Or vice versa, because sometimes it's a client who wants to enter, and they're asking for stuff from their agency in order to do so.
00:01:47.408 --> 00:01:50.710
Because most people overestimate all three of those things.
00:01:51.269 --> 00:01:53.397
So part one, the money.
00:01:53.459 --> 00:01:54.721
Let's start with the easy bit.
00:01:55.069 --> 00:01:58.939
The entry fees straight from the DBA's twenty twenty-seven entry pack.
00:01:59.620 --> 00:02:02.293
If you're a DBA member, your first entry is free.
00:02:02.486 --> 00:02:03.245
Zero pounds.
00:02:03.305 --> 00:02:06.314
And you can't carry it over, so you're gonna miss out on it if you don't use it.
00:02:06.939 --> 00:02:11.415
Each additional entry for members is five hundred and ninety-five pounds plus VAT.
00:02:12.067 --> 00:02:17.555
If you're not a member, it's one thousand one hundred and twenty pounds plus VAT for your first entry.
00:02:18.396 --> 00:02:26.574
And there's an early bird saving, a hundred pounds plus VAT off each entry, as long as you pay before five PM on Friday the twenty-third of October.
00:02:27.334 --> 00:02:28.804
But here's a bit that most people miss.
00:02:28.804 --> 00:02:30.653
You don't actually have to submit by then.
00:02:30.709 --> 00:02:31.632
You just have to pay.
00:02:31.908 --> 00:02:35.183
You can keep working on the entry right up to the first of December deadline.
00:02:36.171 --> 00:02:40.413
One more detail that matters, and I'm just gonna reinforce this'cause I know I've already said it.
00:02:40.731 --> 00:02:42.570
Free member entries can't be deferred.
00:02:43.025 --> 00:02:46.634
Paid entries can be pushed into the following year once, but the free one can't.
00:02:47.085 --> 00:02:49.670
So if you're a member and you don't use it this year, it's gone.
00:02:50.370 --> 00:02:52.759
But to be honest, the money is rarely the real barrier.
00:02:52.988 --> 00:02:54.410
The real barrier is time.
00:02:54.413 --> 00:02:55.572
So let's talk about that.
00:02:56.028 --> 00:02:59.435
Firstly, the client's time, and this is where people get nervous.
00:02:59.918 --> 00:03:07.456
They imagine asking a busy marketing director to fill in a 20-page questionnaire, and they think,"We can't do that to them." You don't have to.
00:03:07.838 --> 00:03:09.761
The approach I've used for years is simple.
00:03:09.802 --> 00:03:11.509
You don't ask the client for everything.
00:03:11.523 --> 00:03:22.466
You ask them for the top 10 results, 10 things that changed after the design launched: sales, share, listings, price point, customer feedback, whatever's relevant.
00:03:23.076 --> 00:03:25.208
And crucially, most of that already exists.
00:03:25.240 --> 00:03:35.161
It's sitting in launch reviews, sales reports, brand tracking decks, trade plans, customer service reports, sometimes even on their social media feedback.
00:03:35.435 --> 00:03:37.149
Nobody needs to write anything new.
00:03:37.456 --> 00:03:41.036
They just need to send out what they've already got or talk you through it on a call.
00:03:41.802 --> 00:03:43.858
Two things make this much easier.
00:03:44.283 --> 00:03:46.257
First, send them a past winning entry.
00:03:46.732 --> 00:03:53.064
Published winners are available on the DPA's effectiveness website, which a lot of people don't know actually, and it's such a great place to start.
00:03:53.661 --> 00:03:58.125
When a client sees how their numbers will actually be used, the request suddenly makes a lot more sense.
00:03:59.060 --> 00:04:01.026
Secondly, give them a priority list.
00:04:01.442 --> 00:04:04.660
Busy people need to know which three things matter most.
00:04:05.100 --> 00:04:10.608
For most entries, it's the original objectives, the sales data, and the marketing spend behind the launch.
00:04:11.000 --> 00:04:19.280
And if they only send those, you've got the bones of an entry that we can start building around So here's the surprise, what you can find out without the client.
00:04:19.646 --> 00:04:21.447
This is the part that surprises people.
00:04:21.459 --> 00:04:24.228
A lot of the evidence doesn't need the client at all.
00:04:24.567 --> 00:04:29.370
Over the years, I've built up a list of places to look, and here are a few of my favorites.
00:04:29.552 --> 00:04:38.961
If you work in FMCG or grocery, stuff that's available in the supermarket, the grocer's top products issue and its reports are absolute gold.
00:04:39.569 --> 00:04:42.338
The older ones give you the market context before the work.
00:04:42.634 --> 00:04:45.050
The newer ones show you the performance after.
00:04:45.466 --> 00:04:55.293
So much of that is freely available, and it's, scan track data, so it's highly, reliable and the kind of data that makes judges very happy.
00:04:55.994 --> 00:05:07.900
Market research summaries from the likes of Euromonitor and Mintel, even the free executive summaries can often paint a picture of the market at the time of brief, and that's a very important part of the entry to get right.
00:05:08.600 --> 00:05:23.156
And generally trade press, so we've mentioned the grocer, but clients are often interviewed about launches, new products, et cetera, and those interviews are full of quotable results that are much easier to get signed off than a brand-new quote.
00:05:23.855 --> 00:05:32.004
Other agencies on the same launch, for example, media, PR, digital agencies, they often have their own case studies with numbers in them.
00:05:32.275 --> 00:05:46.687
So take a look around at the other agencies who are involved in the project and take a look at what they've talked about, whether it's in press releases, in their own award entries, on their own website Next up for me are review sites and social media.
00:05:47.083 --> 00:06:09.889
Customers commenting on the new design unprompted is brilliant supporting evidence, and ironically carries a lot more weight than, on occasion when we're looking at, qualitative, research because those are unprompted quotes when we're seeing them in social media and review sites rather than people being sat down in a room in a focus group being asked questions.
00:06:10.588 --> 00:06:18.263
My rule has always been this: even the smallest amount of data shared can be turned into a strong entry if you know where else to look.
00:06:18.963 --> 00:06:21.230
Now part three, the agency's time.
00:06:21.581 --> 00:06:22.651
I'll be honest about this one.
00:06:22.660 --> 00:06:24.520
The writing itself isn't the slow part.
00:06:24.718 --> 00:06:26.539
The slow part is everything else around it.
00:06:26.847 --> 00:06:33.657
So chasing the client politely for the third time and still hoping you're gonna get another project out of them and trying to balance those two things.
00:06:34.569 --> 00:06:49.163
Agreeing which numbers you can use, working out how to show the results came from design and not from a price promotion or a hot summer or the out-of-home campaign that was going on at the same time, and getting the story into a shape that the judges actually read.
00:06:49.824 --> 00:06:54.240
And that's exactly the kind of work that gets bumped every time a client deadline lands.
00:06:54.631 --> 00:07:04.559
It's important, but it's never urgent like all house jobs within an agency, until suddenly it is in the last week of November when the deadline of the first of December is approaching very fast.
00:07:05.045 --> 00:07:08.071
So my advice is to plan it like a project, not a side task.
00:07:08.287 --> 00:07:09.209
Somebody owns it.
00:07:09.370 --> 00:07:10.444
It has milestones.
00:07:10.718 --> 00:07:15.682
We'll talk about the timeline properly in one of the future episodes, episode five of this miniseries.
00:07:16.383 --> 00:07:17.883
What about confidentiality?
00:07:18.182 --> 00:07:23.319
The one worry I hear a lot is that our client will never let us share the numbers.
00:07:23.716 --> 00:07:26.341
This is usually much less of a problem than people think.
00:07:26.703 --> 00:07:41.556
You actually submit two versions of your entry, a confidential one, which the judges see under strict confidentiality and NDA clauses, and then a publication version where you can redact sensitive figures or swap them for percentages or index numbers.
00:07:42.256 --> 00:07:48.388
If you look at published winners, some of them are full of the words redacted confidential data, and they still won.
00:07:48.650 --> 00:07:52.199
So you can share real numbers with the judges and keep them out of the public eye.
00:07:52.237 --> 00:07:54.199
That doesn't need to be a concern for your client.
00:07:54.899 --> 00:07:56.304
So what does it really cost?
00:07:56.408 --> 00:07:58.294
Let me pull all of this together.
00:07:59.206 --> 00:08:03.509
So money-wise, potentially nothing if you're a DBA member using your free entry.
00:08:03.896 --> 00:08:05.278
A few hundred pounds otherwise.
00:08:05.521 --> 00:08:07.850
Less if you pay before the 23rd of October.
00:08:08.783 --> 00:08:12.828
The client's time is a short email, a top 10 list, and maybe a call.
00:08:13.126 --> 00:08:15.744
Most of what they send through should already exist.
00:08:15.766 --> 00:08:20.711
It'll be lying around in, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint decks on their server.
00:08:21.411 --> 00:08:24.742
If you're an agency, your time, real but manageable.
00:08:24.982 --> 00:08:30.300
If you plan it like a project rather than squeezing it in, or you use an external consultant like myself.
00:08:31.001 --> 00:08:32.057
And what do you get for it?
00:08:32.288 --> 00:08:37.492
Well, this is the big one, and we've got a whole other episode dedicated to how to use your win.
00:08:37.711 --> 00:08:40.082
But you get independent proof that your design works.
00:08:40.533 --> 00:08:50.701
It's been judged by people who commission design for a living, and for most agencies, that's worth a great deal more than the effort that goes into writing one if they put it to use in the right way.
00:08:50.975 --> 00:09:00.227
And like I say, the first episode in this series is a great one to go back and listen to if you're wondering,"Well, what the hell are we gonna do with the award anyway?" So what to do next?
00:09:00.487 --> 00:09:06.631
If you've got a project in mind, but you're not sure what you'd actually need to gather, this is exactly what I can help with.
00:09:06.982 --> 00:09:09.412
link in the show notes and you'll find a form.
00:09:09.807 --> 00:09:22.553
Tell me about your project on that form, and within 24 hours, I'll send you a personalized verdict, including what evidence you'd need and how much work it's likely to be before you spend a penny or ask your client for anything.
00:09:23.253 --> 00:09:25.130
Next time, I'm turning this around.
00:09:25.208 --> 00:09:33.689
Agencies often assume that the Design Effectiveness Awards are their trophy and that the client is doing them a favor, and in my experience, it's often the other way around.
00:09:33.711 --> 00:09:39.725
So episode three is all about the client, why brand side teams should want to enter, and how to ask them.
00:09:40.401 --> 00:09:42.450
Thanks for listening and see you next time.
00:00:42.370 --> 00:00:44.971
We're a little time poor and not exactly cash rich.
00:00:45.304 --> 00:00:47.859
That's a line from an email I received recently.
00:00:48.410 --> 00:01:01.742
It came from a client, the brand owner, whose agency wanted to enter their project for a design effectiveness award, and she followed it up with the question everyone is really asking: What would be required from us in terms of time, input, and information?
00:01:02.716 --> 00:01:05.552
I love that email because it's honest, and it deserves an honest answer.
00:01:05.581 --> 00:01:07.518
So that's what today's episode is.
00:01:07.822 --> 00:01:10.516
Real numbers, real time, and what it actually takes.
00:01:11.216 --> 00:01:14.252
Hello, and welcome back to the Authority Builder podcast.
00:01:14.295 --> 00:01:20.742
I'm Charlotte Ellis Maldari, and this is episode two of my short series on the DBA Design Effectiveness Awards.
00:01:21.549 --> 00:01:25.472
In the last episode, I talked about why these awards are different from every other design award.
00:01:25.924 --> 00:01:29.587
They judge whether the work worked, not just how it looks.
00:01:30.058 --> 00:01:32.245
If you missed it, go back today and have a listen.
00:01:32.944 --> 00:01:34.026
Today is a practical one.
00:01:34.442 --> 00:01:39.484
I'm gonna break the cost down into three parts: the money, the client's time, and your agency's time.
00:01:40.133 --> 00:01:46.655
Or vice versa, because sometimes it's a client who wants to enter, and they're asking for stuff from their agency in order to do so.
00:01:47.408 --> 00:01:50.710
Because most people overestimate all three of those things.
00:01:51.269 --> 00:01:53.397
So part one, the money.
00:01:53.459 --> 00:01:54.721
Let's start with the easy bit.
00:01:55.069 --> 00:01:58.939
The entry fees straight from the DBA's twenty twenty-seven entry pack.
00:01:59.620 --> 00:02:02.293
If you're a DBA member, your first entry is free.
00:02:02.486 --> 00:02:03.245
Zero pounds.
00:02:03.305 --> 00:02:06.314
And you can't carry it over, so you're gonna miss out on it if you don't use it.
00:02:06.939 --> 00:02:11.415
Each additional entry for members is five hundred and ninety-five pounds plus VAT.
00:02:12.067 --> 00:02:17.555
If you're not a member, it's one thousand one hundred and twenty pounds plus VAT for your first entry.
00:02:18.396 --> 00:02:26.574
And there's an early bird saving, a hundred pounds plus VAT off each entry, as long as you pay before five PM on Friday the twenty-third of October.
00:02:27.334 --> 00:02:28.804
But here's a bit that most people miss.
00:02:28.804 --> 00:02:30.653
You don't actually have to submit by then.
00:02:30.709 --> 00:02:31.632
You just have to pay.
00:02:31.908 --> 00:02:35.183
You can keep working on the entry right up to the first of December deadline.
00:02:36.171 --> 00:02:40.413
One more detail that matters, and I'm just gonna reinforce this'cause I know I've already said it.
00:02:40.731 --> 00:02:42.570
Free member entries can't be deferred.
00:02:43.025 --> 00:02:46.634
Paid entries can be pushed into the following year once, but the free one can't.
00:02:47.085 --> 00:02:49.670
So if you're a member and you don't use it this year, it's gone.
00:02:50.370 --> 00:02:52.759
But to be honest, the money is rarely the real barrier.
00:02:52.988 --> 00:02:54.410
The real barrier is time.
00:02:54.413 --> 00:02:55.572
So let's talk about that.
00:02:56.028 --> 00:02:59.435
Firstly, the client's time, and this is where people get nervous.
00:02:59.918 --> 00:03:07.456
They imagine asking a busy marketing director to fill in a 20-page questionnaire, and they think,"We can't do that to them." You don't have to.
00:03:07.838 --> 00:03:09.761
The approach I've used for years is simple.
00:03:09.802 --> 00:03:11.509
You don't ask the client for everything.
00:03:11.523 --> 00:03:22.466
You ask them for the top 10 results, 10 things that changed after the design launched: sales, share, listings, price point, customer feedback, whatever's relevant.
00:03:23.076 --> 00:03:25.208
And crucially, most of that already exists.
00:03:25.240 --> 00:03:35.161
It's sitting in launch reviews, sales reports, brand tracking decks, trade plans, customer service reports, sometimes even on their social media feedback.
00:03:35.435 --> 00:03:37.149
Nobody needs to write anything new.
00:03:37.456 --> 00:03:41.036
They just need to send out what they've already got or talk you through it on a call.
00:03:41.802 --> 00:03:43.858
Two things make this much easier.
00:03:44.283 --> 00:03:46.257
First, send them a past winning entry.
00:03:46.732 --> 00:03:53.064
Published winners are available on the DPA's effectiveness website, which a lot of people don't know actually, and it's such a great place to start.
00:03:53.661 --> 00:03:58.125
When a client sees how their numbers will actually be used, the request suddenly makes a lot more sense.
00:03:59.060 --> 00:04:01.026
Secondly, give them a priority list.
00:04:01.442 --> 00:04:04.660
Busy people need to know which three things matter most.
00:04:05.100 --> 00:04:10.608
For most entries, it's the original objectives, the sales data, and the marketing spend behind the launch.
00:04:11.000 --> 00:04:19.280
And if they only send those, you've got the bones of an entry that we can start building around So here's the surprise, what you can find out without the client.
00:04:19.646 --> 00:04:21.447
This is the part that surprises people.
00:04:21.459 --> 00:04:24.228
A lot of the evidence doesn't need the client at all.
00:04:24.567 --> 00:04:29.370
Over the years, I've built up a list of places to look, and here are a few of my favorites.
00:04:29.552 --> 00:04:38.961
If you work in FMCG or grocery, stuff that's available in the supermarket, the grocer's top products issue and its reports are absolute gold.
00:04:39.569 --> 00:04:42.338
The older ones give you the market context before the work.
00:04:42.634 --> 00:04:45.050
The newer ones show you the performance after.
00:04:45.466 --> 00:04:55.293
So much of that is freely available, and it's, scan track data, so it's highly, reliable and the kind of data that makes judges very happy.
00:04:55.994 --> 00:05:07.900
Market research summaries from the likes of Euromonitor and Mintel, even the free executive summaries can often paint a picture of the market at the time of brief, and that's a very important part of the entry to get right.
00:05:08.600 --> 00:05:23.156
And generally trade press, so we've mentioned the grocer, but clients are often interviewed about launches, new products, et cetera, and those interviews are full of quotable results that are much easier to get signed off than a brand-new quote.
00:05:23.855 --> 00:05:32.004
Other agencies on the same launch, for example, media, PR, digital agencies, they often have their own case studies with numbers in them.
00:05:32.275 --> 00:05:46.687
So take a look around at the other agencies who are involved in the project and take a look at what they've talked about, whether it's in press releases, in their own award entries, on their own website Next up for me are review sites and social media.
00:05:47.083 --> 00:06:09.889
Customers commenting on the new design unprompted is brilliant supporting evidence, and ironically carries a lot more weight than, on occasion when we're looking at, qualitative, research because those are unprompted quotes when we're seeing them in social media and review sites rather than people being sat down in a room in a focus group being asked questions.
00:06:10.588 --> 00:06:18.263
My rule has always been this: even the smallest amount of data shared can be turned into a strong entry if you know where else to look.
00:06:18.963 --> 00:06:21.230
Now part three, the agency's time.
00:06:21.581 --> 00:06:22.651
I'll be honest about this one.
00:06:22.660 --> 00:06:24.520
The writing itself isn't the slow part.
00:06:24.718 --> 00:06:26.539
The slow part is everything else around it.
00:06:26.847 --> 00:06:33.657
So chasing the client politely for the third time and still hoping you're gonna get another project out of them and trying to balance those two things.
00:06:34.569 --> 00:06:49.163
Agreeing which numbers you can use, working out how to show the results came from design and not from a price promotion or a hot summer or the out-of-home campaign that was going on at the same time, and getting the story into a shape that the judges actually read.
00:06:49.824 --> 00:06:54.240
And that's exactly the kind of work that gets bumped every time a client deadline lands.
00:06:54.631 --> 00:07:04.559
It's important, but it's never urgent like all house jobs within an agency, until suddenly it is in the last week of November when the deadline of the first of December is approaching very fast.
00:07:05.045 --> 00:07:08.071
So my advice is to plan it like a project, not a side task.
00:07:08.287 --> 00:07:09.209
Somebody owns it.
00:07:09.370 --> 00:07:10.444
It has milestones.
00:07:10.718 --> 00:07:15.682
We'll talk about the timeline properly in one of the future episodes, episode five of this miniseries.
00:07:16.383 --> 00:07:17.883
What about confidentiality?
00:07:18.182 --> 00:07:23.319
The one worry I hear a lot is that our client will never let us share the numbers.
00:07:23.716 --> 00:07:26.341
This is usually much less of a problem than people think.
00:07:26.703 --> 00:07:41.556
You actually submit two versions of your entry, a confidential one, which the judges see under strict confidentiality and NDA clauses, and then a publication version where you can redact sensitive figures or swap them for percentages or index numbers.
00:07:42.256 --> 00:07:48.388
If you look at published winners, some of them are full of the words redacted confidential data, and they still won.
00:07:48.650 --> 00:07:52.199
So you can share real numbers with the judges and keep them out of the public eye.
00:07:52.237 --> 00:07:54.199
That doesn't need to be a concern for your client.
00:07:54.899 --> 00:07:56.304
So what does it really cost?
00:07:56.408 --> 00:07:58.294
Let me pull all of this together.
00:07:59.206 --> 00:08:03.509
So money-wise, potentially nothing if you're a DBA member using your free entry.
00:08:03.896 --> 00:08:05.278
A few hundred pounds otherwise.
00:08:05.521 --> 00:08:07.850
Less if you pay before the 23rd of October.
00:08:08.783 --> 00:08:12.828
The client's time is a short email, a top 10 list, and maybe a call.
00:08:13.126 --> 00:08:15.744
Most of what they send through should already exist.
00:08:15.766 --> 00:08:20.711
It'll be lying around in, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint decks on their server.
00:08:21.411 --> 00:08:24.742
If you're an agency, your time, real but manageable.
00:08:24.982 --> 00:08:30.300
If you plan it like a project rather than squeezing it in, or you use an external consultant like myself.
00:08:31.001 --> 00:08:32.057
And what do you get for it?
00:08:32.288 --> 00:08:37.492
Well, this is the big one, and we've got a whole other episode dedicated to how to use your win.
00:08:37.711 --> 00:08:40.082
But you get independent proof that your design works.
00:08:40.533 --> 00:08:50.701
It's been judged by people who commission design for a living, and for most agencies, that's worth a great deal more than the effort that goes into writing one if they put it to use in the right way.
00:08:50.975 --> 00:09:00.227
And like I say, the first episode in this series is a great one to go back and listen to if you're wondering,"Well, what the hell are we gonna do with the award anyway?" So what to do next?
00:09:00.487 --> 00:09:06.631
If you've got a project in mind, but you're not sure what you'd actually need to gather, this is exactly what I can help with.
00:09:06.982 --> 00:09:09.412
link in the show notes and you'll find a form.
00:09:09.807 --> 00:09:22.553
Tell me about your project on that form, and within 24 hours, I'll send you a personalized verdict, including what evidence you'd need and how much work it's likely to be before you spend a penny or ask your client for anything.
00:09:23.253 --> 00:09:25.130
Next time, I'm turning this around.
00:09:25.208 --> 00:09:33.689
Agencies often assume that the Design Effectiveness Awards are their trophy and that the client is doing them a favor, and in my experience, it's often the other way around.
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So episode three is all about the client, why brand side teams should want to enter, and how to ask them.
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Thanks for listening and see you next time.
