Awards for technology companies 

Awards are not a box-ticking exercise: what makes an entry stand out

Awards for technology companies can be powerful. They can build credibility, recognise the work of a team, strengthen an individual leader’s profile and give a business an external proof point that customers, partners and employees can understand. But entering an award should never become an exercise in simply filling in a form because a category exists.

The starting point should always be strategy: do you genuinely have a story that deserves to be told, and can you evidence it? That sounds obvious, but it is where many entries fall down. A strong submission is not a list of claims. It is a clear narrative that explains why this company, product, programme or person should be considered above the other entrants in the category.

For a product or solution award, that means going beyond features. What problem does it solve? Why does that problem matter now? What is different about the approach, and what evidence shows that it is delivering value in the market? For an individual leadership award, the same principle applies. A job title is not enough. The submission needs to demonstrate experience, contribution, influence, outcomes and the difference that person has made to the business, its customers, partners or wider industry.

Awards for technology companies must shape the story from the outset 

Good entries are written to answer what the judges are actually being asked to assess, not what the entrant would simply like to talk about. That may mean challenging the initial angle, asking for stronger proof points, or deciding that a different category would give the story a better chance of standing out.

Evidence matters. Commercial growth, customer outcomes, programme participation, product adoption, market impact, testimonials, measurable improvements and credible examples all help move an entry from assertion to substantiation. Judges can only assess what is in front of them, so if the strongest evidence is missing, the entry may never fully communicate why it deserves to progress.

Collaboration matters 

This is also why collaboration between the company and the agency or writer is critical. The right information needs to arrive early enough to build the story properly. If key proof points, customer examples or leadership details come in piecemeal, teams can end up creating draft after draft without ever getting to the strongest version of the submission. Awards for technology companies often have hard deadlines, and some also carry entry fees, so there is a real cost in time and budget. They need to be treated with the same discipline as any other strategic communications investment.

Competition 

There is another reality that entrants cannot control: competition. We are rarely privy to what other organisations are submitting, how many entries a category will attract or how strong the field will be. Some awards receive a significant volume of submissions, which means judging panels have to make difficult choices about which entries make the cut. That is precisely why the quality of the story, the relevance to the criteria and the strength of the evidence matter so much.

No PR agency can guarantee a win, and it would be wrong to suggest otherwise. There are too many variables outside the entrant’s control. What we can control is whether the submission gives the judges every possible reason to take it seriously.

Our ethos is therefore not to measure success by the volume of awards entered. It is to be selective, build the strongest possible case and focus on submissions that have a credible chance of being shortlisted or winning. In a crowded category, merely entering is not the objective. Being genuinely competitive is.

Here are some of our own award successes!