Insights from Award Writing Agencies Supporting the International Brilliance Awards™

A well-run business award programme is not a vanity exercise, even if it can look like one from the outside. Research from the British Quality Foundation has linked award wins to revenue increases averaging around 40%, and separate industry surveys have put the figure even higher. A Harris Poll found that three in four consumers say they would choose an award-winning company over a competitor, and Harvard Business Review has reported that third-party recognition, awards included, correlates with meaningfully higher conversion rates than self-reported claims. None of that happens because a trophy is handsome on a shelf. It happens because winning is treated by the businesses that take it seriously as proof that can be pointed to when a customer, investor, or new hire is deciding whether to trust the company.

Which is why the writing of the entry matters more than most people assume. Judges on major UK award panels routinely read hundreds of submissions in a single sitting, and research into their feedback keeps landing on the same few complaints: vague language that could apply to any business, entries with a good story and no proof behind it, entries with plenty of proof and no story to hold it together, and submissions that clearly answer a different question to the one the category actually asked. Getting an entry shortlisted is, in large part, a matter of avoiding those traps.

We asked seven of the agencies we work with to describe how they do it. Their answers point to the same underlying discipline, applied in different ways.

Treating the entry as an asset, not a task

The agencies that spoke to us most confidently were the ones that don’t think of an award entry as a one-off piece of copywriting. August Recognition, founded by Donna O’Toole, builds its process around a client’s values as much as its numbers, on the theory that judges respond to companies that stand for something specific rather than companies that simply perform well.

"Award-winning brands don’t just market products - they lead with purpose, champion their people, care about sustainability, and innovate to elevate everyday lives,” O’Toole says. “At August, we embed these values into every awards strategy, helping our clients across the world be recognised for what truly matters.”

Lucinda White, Award Writer & Managing Director of Pure Awards, frames the same idea in more explicitly commercial terms. Their team describes submissions as something with a return on investment that outlasts the ceremony itself:

“We see award submissions as a strategic business tool, not just a marketing exercise. A well-crafted entry can strengthen reputation, support growth, motivate teams and create valuable commercial opportunities long after the judging process ends.” 

That claim lines up with what the wider research shows: award recognition tends to keep paying out in press coverage, sales conversations, and recruitment long after the ceremony, provided the entry itself was strong enough to win in the first place.

The discipline of saying no

A second theme runs through the agencies that were most willing to talk about turning work away. Louise Turner, chief wordsmith at Awards Writers, says her agency runs a free discovery session specifically to establish whether a project has a realistic shot before any writing starts.

“We’re not afraid to challenge clients and keep our results strong by turning down more work than we take on,” she says. “If we don’t think we can get the client a place on the shortlist, we won’t waste their money or time by writing the entry.”

That is a slightly unusual thing for a service business to say out loud, since it means walking away from paying work. But it tracks with the judging research: entries built around the wrong story, in the wrong category, rarely recover, no matter how well they’re written.

Aura PR takes a version of the same discipline and points it inward, at the client’s own blind spots rather than at whether to accept the project.

“Most businesses underestimate what they’ve actually achieved,” the team says. “Our job is to hold a mirror up, find the gold, and build a case that judges can’t ignore. A great award entry isn’t polished prose, it’s a sharp, evidence-led argument for why you deserve to win.” 

That last line is closer to how judges themselves describe the entries that score well: not the most impressively written, but the ones that make a claim and then immediately back it up.

Translating for a reader outside the business

One problem shows up in judging feedback more than almost any other: businesses write as if the reader already understands the internal context, the acronyms, the significance of a particular initiative. Jeremy Colman, founder and principal consultant at Kestrel HR, describes his agency’s role as closing exactly that gap.

“We combine commercial insight with communications expertise to translate complex initiatives into clear, engaging submissions,” he says, “ensuring our clients’ stories land with impact and resonate with judges.”

It’s a small distinction, translating rather than simply writing, but it matches what judges say separates entries that are easy to score from entries that leave them guessing at the point.

What twenty years buys you

The two agencies with the longest track records made a different case altogether: that experience, accumulated across thousands of entries, is itself a kind of evidence.

Suzy Pettican, managing director of Reflection PR Awards, has more than 20 years of communications experience behind the entries she now writes, across sectors as varied as social housing, accountancy, and tourism.

“Writing award entries is a big passion of mine,” she says. “I love working from an initial call and lots of information to combining everything together and producing a clear, succinct, and robust entry that really catches the judges’ attention.” 

The range of sectors is the detail worth noting. An entry that works for a housing association and one that works for a leisure operator are not the same document, and being able to move between them without losing the thread is not a small skill.

Boost Awards makes the strongest version of this claim. Founded in 2006, it was the first agency of its kind anywhere, a fact confirmed by independent UK awards directories rather than just its own marketing. Managing director Chris Robinson puts the agency’s method down to two decades of doing nothing else:

“Our 20+ years of experience have translated into an extremely thorough approach which centres around interviewing the right people, and using evaluation and research to ensure our entries not only tell the best possible, human-authored story, but are also backed up with the strongest possible quantifiable evidence.” Every entry, he adds, is supported by professional graphic design and a cloud-based planning tool built on a database of more than 5,000 awards, a resource the agency has used to help clients win over 2,500 awards to date, from SMEs to FTSE 100 companies. “This assured, knowledgeable, meticulous approach,” Robinson says, “has helped our clients win more than 2,500 credible third-party awards over our 20-year existence.”

The common thread

Strip away the differences in approach, and the same principle sits underneath all seven answers: a story on its own doesn’t win, and a spreadsheet on its own doesn’t win. Judging research keeps arriving at the same conclusion: that the entries which score highest are the ones where every claim of impact is immediately followed by the proof of it, and every piece of data is given enough context to mean something to a reader who has never worked inside the business. Whether an agency gets there by building around values, refusing weak briefs, translating complexity, or simply having written thousands of entries before, the destination is the same. If you’re preparing a submission for this year’s International Brilliance Awards, that’s the standard worth writing to.

About the International Brilliance Awards™

Founded in 2014, the International Brilliance Awards™ recognise work defined by clear thinking, strong execution, and meaningful business impact across organisations worldwide.

The International Brilliance Awards™ serve as the flagship programme of the Brilliance Awards family, which includes Business Brilliance Awards, HR Brilliance Awards, Internal Communications (IC) Brilliance Awards, Marketing & PR Brilliance Awards, Sales & Revenue Brilliance Awards, and Sustainability & ESG Brilliance Awards.

Each programme focuses on a distinct area of organisational performance, while maintaining a consistent standard of evaluation through an independent, blind judging process.