Top tips for entrants

By Ian Hall
(Public Affairs News editor and chairman of PAN Awards judges)

• Be specific – e.g. ‘we produced a 15-page briefing document that was emailed to 50 MPs’ will be looked upon more favourably by judges than ‘we produced documentation sent to parliamentarians’; e.g. ‘our revenues from July 2009-July 2010 increased from £1m to £1.3m’ will be looked upon more favourably than ‘our revenues recently increased by 30%’.
• Avoid jargon – judges will look harshly upon entries deploying expressions such as ‘thought-leadership’ and ‘stakeholders’ (instead, for example, specifically state the names of ‘target groups’)
• Be specific about the reason for public affairs activity – few organisations undertake a lobbying campaign merely to ‘raise the profile’ of an issue; if the organisation was campaigning because of, for example, potential legislative threat, then state specifically what the threat was/is
• Be honest about who was responsible for conceiving and undertaking work (e.g. division of labour between in-house staff and agency staff)
• Don’t assume judges know your sector’s/organisation’s issues and sector acronyms – avoid acronyms specific to your ‘space’
• If you mark anything on an awards entry, or supporting document, that is confidential, it will be treated as confidential