EEMAX Awards is an annual initiative of the Event and Entertainment Management Association (EEMA) that recognizes experiential agencies for their contribution to the industry across 30 categories. With EEMAX Global Convention and Awards less than a month away, aspirants are scurrying to put their entries together in the best way possible. However, past record reveals that many times competent contenders lose out on a possible win because their entries were unable to do justice to their work. To resolve this issue EEMA- North organized it’s first
‘Edgeucation Session’ by bringing specialists to share some expert tips and pointers on
‘How to create a winning entry’.“Creating an award entry needs time”, said
Sapna Gupta, Content Director, The Word Jockey Creative Content Studio. She adds, “Time majorly goes in identifying that big idea around which the award entry should be weaved. Alone time is very important for inspiration to strike.”
Connecting over a video call
Roshan Abbas, Founder of leading experiential agency Encompass, shared his views on the subject and took questions from the audience over a 30 minute long session. He stated, “When creating an entry you need to start thinking like an ad maker as opposed to a documentary maker. Ditch the details, include evocative visuals and incite the imagination of the viewer”. Stressing upon the importance of hiring a professional to do the job he says, “90% of you will fail if you entrust your internal team to create the entry. Be it the storyboard or a film, documentation by a professional will not only do justice to your hard work but can also make your average work look great”. He revealed he gets a fair share of his design inspiration from two websites- Dehance and Dribble.
Emmanuel Upputuru, Chief Integration Officer, ITSA has been a multiple award winner for his compelling award entries and has been on the jury of Adfest, Abbys, DMA among others. Offering his tutelage to the congregation of event managers he commented, “When I sit down to begin creating an award entry I ask myself why should I be awarded? This question has the answer to that unique idea that will differentiate your entry from the lot”. When asked what the characteristics of a winning entry looks like he stated, “When adjudging award entries my attention is always drawn to entries that make me question- how could the agency pull this off? The emotion of being overwhelmed by the sheer uniqueness of a story is an irrefutable one”.
Sapna Gupta, who has assisted several agencies in creating award entries over the years, advises, “One must refrain from using big words, idioms or complicated innuendos. The message in any entry should be compelling and direct.” Roshan Abbas adds, “The video is the most important element of an entry. When creating the video your objective should be to produce something that equates to the most compelling movie trailer you’ve ever seen.”
Indubitably in unison, all three experts agreed that putting money behind an award entry is critical, the majority of the expense being towards production of the film.
The workshop was an effort by EEMA North region and was led by
Sanjeev Pasricha, VP-North and Founder CSDirekt and
Ratika Bhatnagar, member of North Regional Committee and Founder Pilcrow Communications.
