It seems that every industry sector has its own awards. In our view, some are more meaningful than others but, in general, we like to see our clients win an award. Each time they do, we publicise it through every available channel.

Recently, we looked back through our PR files and realised that our clients have won rather a lot of awards between them over the past few years. They include technology awards, new product awards, customer service awards, sales success awards, industry sector competitive awards and many, many more.

What’s the point we’re making? Well, though it’s difficult to claim full responsibility for a client winning an award, we like to think that we usually play a major role in making that happen.

In fact, on more than one occasion, Swordfish has been almost entirely responsible for an award win: we’ve been known to do everything from registering the intent to participate, filling in the application forms, writing the descriptive narratives detailing the unique proposition or competitive reason that the company should win, and providing all the background evidence to make a compelling case. It’s just one of the things we do for clients. There’s no doubt that the way an award entry is written makes a huge difference to the perception of the judging panel. And that’s one of the things we do best.

Let’s face it, everyone likes to receive an award. One of our clients specialised in bestowing awards for quality and performance in the hospitality sector. We wrote about each of those successes to help the participating organisation publicise its achievement. From the feedback, we clearly saw that the awards were always very well received.

Our senior writer and marketing strategist, Steve, was a judge on a programme local to Market Harborough for new and growing businesses called Pioneer 10. From that experience, he observed that award participants are eager and committed and that the outcome is highly regarded.

Don’t dismiss awards as cynical or irrelevant. They can play a great part as an effective promotional tool if marketed properly.