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This is an article from the June Bulletin Issue written by Tom Treverton, Event Director APEA Live 2024, Five Senses Media Ltd.
For those of you that don’t know me, it’s been my honour to be Event Director of your APEA Live event since 2010. This is an event I love working on for so many reasons. It delivers true business value to its participants via its blend of Exhibition, Conference and Awards elements. In addition, the APEA and downstream forecourt community is packed with wonderfully talented and inspiring people, whom it has been a pleasure to work for.
This is an event that provides a long and varied ‘to do’ list, which spans the full year in-between editions. As with any project, I regard some of these tasks as more important to success than others. Arguably, none more-so than the annual campaign to encourage as many of you as possible to submit entries for the APEA Awards.
To explain why this is true, instead of writing an article today on ‘Top Tips For Submitting A Great Entry’ (BTW, these tips are available for you at www.apealive.co.uk), I thought I’d take a step back and instead offer my thoughts on why entering is so important in the first place, and how – in my view – it should be a ‘no-brainer’, each year.
After 14 years and thousands-and-thousands of conversations with you lovely lot on this very topic, I have a few thoughts! In all honesty, I’d need the whole Bulletin to do this subject justice, but today I’ll stick to 4 headline themes!
Let’s start with the obvious, the strength and value of any industry’s Awards is wholly incumbent on its level of competition, which is solely determined by the quality of its entries. Yours is no different.
The APEA Awards is the glittering climax to every edition of APEA Live. It exists to recognise and reward the best innovations, products and talent within the industry, in any given year. It does this via 8 categories. Just 8… not 28! Our categories are limited to preserve prestige and be truly meaningful. The categories are purposefully designed to be inclusive, i.e. accessible to the diverse range of businesses and services within the market.
So, for this reason, the importance of annually uncovering the best projects, products and people cannot be understated – as far as our Awards are concerned, it’s everything!
So, beyond all of the incredible benefits your business can derive via entering (more on this below), consider this fact for a moment: if you love being at the APEA Awards to network, host clients, get out with the team, celebrate, be entertained and have fun, then please never lose sight of the fact that the whole occasion is dependent on you and your peers collectively supporting the entry process.
Secondly, I’ll pre-empt one of the most commonly expressed barriers-to-entry that I encounter each year, by posting my reply from the get-go: “Trust me, you DO have something you can enter!”
In business, it can often feel like a year flies by. It’s only when you force yourself to stop and reflect that you realise how much you and your team has actually accomplished. I can guarantee you right now: your business and your colleagues HAVE achieved something Awards-worthy this year, and there WILL be a ‘home’ for those achievements within our categories.
I’ve lost count of the amount of times a conversation has started with the gut-reaction, “We’ve nothing to enter this year”, only for a 5 minute conversation to subsequently reveal that they definitely do! Why? Because you are busy people! Stop for a minute… mentally re-run the past 12 months and you’ll realise certain achievements that were pretty awesome.
This brings me to headline number three…entering is SO worth your time!
Believe me, I understand the hesitance! As someone that has entered our own company for multiple event-based Awards, I know that entry creation takes effort, with time you’re convinced you don’t have. Fight this thought, as the upsides are so valuable.
I know for a fact that, each year, hundreds of guests sit at the APEA Awards, watching and clapping the year’s nominees, observing other companies receiving industry-wide attention and thinking, “We should’ve entered”, “We did something better than that”, “My colleague achieved just as much as they did”. And they will be right!
Don’t let this happen! Take 5 minutes to think about your year’s achievements, then a couple of hours to submit an entry. It’s completely free and, should you become a finalist, you will receive months of free promotion via the event’s marketing campaign, plus huge exposure on the night, before the best of the industry (including your customers).
It’s true, you literally do have to be ‘in it to win it’…but it’s also true to say that you don’t have to win it to benefit! A win is sensational, but being a finalist alone is so worth your time. It’s the best free advertising to the best audience your business will receive.
This provides a fitting segway to headline number 4, and (please forgive my bluntness), hands-down my least favourite barrier-to-entry, which I sincerely hope one year I’ll never hear…”There’s no point in entering, the same lot always get shortlisted.”
Firstly, this is statistically untrue; the APEA Awards engage new companies every single year (look it up!).
However, more importantly, it is true to say that certain companies have achieved finalist status on multiple occasions. So why is this?
Because they understand all of the previous headlines mentioned in this article. They understand that every year their business achieves something Awards-worthy. They know that the health of their industry Awards is dependent upon their participation and the participation of their peers (including their competition). They understand that the time it takes to enter is ‘paid back’ one hundred-fold, via the promotion they derive from a shortlisting.
A final point on this headline; if you are tired of seeing your competitors being finalists and your company not, the way to change this is NOT to decide against entering, but to ‘throw your hat in the ring’ as well! To instigate change, there has to be change. Our Awards must represent the best of the industry, but it can only do that if the best in the industry participate.
So, go for it in 2024!
The online entry platform for the APEA Awards 2024 is now open at www.apealive.co.uk. The deadline for entries is Friday 20 September. It is free to enter. You can enter as many categories as you like. You can start an entry, then save-as- you-go (no need to start/complete all at once). Finalists will be announced on Friday 11 October, following the judging period. The APEA Awards forms part of APEA Live on Thursday 14 November at Marshal Arena, Stadium MK.
If you have any questions about entering, please don’t hesitate to get in touch? I’m contactable at Tom@fivesensesmedia.co.uk or 01442 289920.
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