6 Reasons Why You Should Enter the Shorty Awards (Plus Tips)

Back in April of 2014, we listed a few reasons why your clients should participate in The Shorty Awards -- and it wasn't just because we happen to know that Sawhorse Media CEO Greg Galant, founder of Muckrack and the Shortys and owner of the coveted @gregory handle, is a good guy. Many of you have certainly already applied to the awards this year (deadline February 26th, one week from today), but we talked to Greg this week for some more reminders as to why it's in the best interests of both yourself and your clients to nominate their work. We've interspersed these points with some of the best recent campaigns. 1. The case studies The very act of applying is basically creating a case study to showcase the hard work of both yourself and your firm. As Greg puts it, "Often when you call a client, they have to get approval from legal and they never get their act together...but they're much more likely to say yes to the awards deal." Here, for example, is an MRY case study for Coca-Cola: 2. To give credit to those who deserve it How else would we recognize the "unsung heroes" behind BatDad or Dikembe Mutombo giving a Snapchat tour of the NBA's New York offices? 3. The media attention This one may be the most obvious, take these stats from Greg: "several million" people visit the site to participate, more than 100,000 people watched the live-stream last year, and the event (in addition to the work) lives permanently on YouTube when it's over. Those totals may not equal the "billion people" claimed by Red Bull in the campaign below, but they're still kind of awesome: 4. New business Agencies may want to "think about the ROI of publicizing their relationship with the client," but, as Greg tells us, "[Clients] generally focus on the negative over the positive," and highlighting a win can potentially help win new business and retain current clients. "What's so good about celebrating a win is that we rarely have the chance to do it; we just move on." (Here's the #VoicesHavePower campaign produced by Sew for Verizon): 5. Limited time/monetary investment "It's the social media age...there's no reason to mail books or write a whole novel." 6. Getting your name and your clients' names in front of industry leaders Some high-level industry folks who've participated in years past: Mark Crumpacker, chief marketing/development officer at Chipotle Kathy Savitt, CMO and head of media for Yahoo! Chris Brandt, CMO of Taco Bell You get the point. Finally, Greg has some tips for those entering this year: "Of course creativity and smart usage of the medium matters, but judges want to see the business case for why something worked. The better you can explain business objectives going into a project, metrics used, and performance, the stronger your entry will be. The key: including more data and explaining why that data matters." Good luck to all who enter.

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6 Reasons Why You Should Enter the Shorty Awards (Plus Tips)

With CEO/founder Greg Galant.

Patrick Coffee

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