Entering half as many awards and winning four times as often

The brand entered roughly thirty award programmes a year, chosen largely by whichever organiser emailed the marketing team, and won almost nothing. Entry fees and staff time were substantial and the return was close to zero.

We assessed every programme on three questions: is it credible in this market, does the brand have evidence that fits the judging criteria, and would winning it matter to anyone the brand cares about. Most failed at least one.

Fourteen programmes survived the cut. For each, we built the submission around the evidence a judging panel actually scores, gathering the measurement well before the deadline rather than reverse-engineering a narrative afterwards.

Entry volume halved and the win rate rose sharply. More importantly the wins came from programmes with genuine standing in the region, which made them worth citing.