Tips for entering the IABC Silver Leaf Awards

By Mirko Petricevic

If you’re on the fence about whether to enter this year’s Silver Leaf Awards (deadline is June 30) we can help you get to the other side.

IABC Waterloo recently wrapped up its five-part UpSkill webinar series exploring the awards work plan template, which is a requirement for entries in most categories.

Here are some of the top takeaways shared by IABC Fellows and former Gold Quill Awards chairs during the series.

First, don’t leave it until the last minute! Assembling a strong entry is more than a day’s work — but it’s worth it!

IABC awards programs are professional development programs. If you’re starting out, earning an award will help polish your profile. If you’re a mid-career communicator, the awards are an opportunity to learn by serving as a volunteer evaluator.

There’s no secret formula for scoring an award. All the information you need, including templates and the all-important rubrics, are available on the IABC Gold Quill Awards website! To make your entry as strong as possible, simply read the how-to guides and follow the rubrics.

Here are takeaways for each of the six sections of the work plan template.

Sec. 1: Business need or opportunity

  • Don’t underestimate this section of the entry. It’s the foundation for all of that follows.

  • Don’t list “raising awareness” as your business need — it’s only a means to an end. What’s the reason you need to raise awareness? Is it to increase revenue? Is it to reduce costs? Ask yourself again and again until you get to the true business need.

Sec. 2: Stakeholder analysis

  • Provide enough detail to demonstrate that you know your target audiences.

  • The demographics of your audiences are important, but don’t forget to describe how you considered psychographics — attitudes, opinions and beliefs. 

  • List more than one stakeholder group.

  • The different groups are not equally important to your campaign — prioritize them. 

  • Who are relevant influencers and what makes them influential in changing the behaviour of your target audience?

Sec. 3: Goals and objectives

  • The goal is a broad overarching statement. It might not be measurable.

  • Share your SMART objectives (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timed) crafted to help reach your goal. For example, “during the campaign we will increase or decrease X (activity), by Y (amount) by Z (date).” Or, we will decrease the number of monthly workplace injuries by 25 per cent by the end of the year.

  • Measure changes in behaviour.

  • Objectives that produce outcomes (results) are more important than outputs (communication materials, tactics deployed and more).

Sec. 4: Solution overview

  • Alignment is key! Show evaluators how your solution was aligned to your business need, stakeholder analysis, goal and SMART objectives.

  • We’re storytellers. So, share your compelling narrative! Clearly and concisely tell evaluators how all the parts of the campaign were woven together.

  • Don’t rely on the work sample to tell your campaign story. Tell it all in the work plan.

  • The solution must be unique to your project — not an off-the-shelf solution.

Sec. 5: Implementation and challenges

  • Summarize your budget including money and labour dedicated to your project.

  • Essentials for high scores: alignment; innovation; high-level tactical implementation; stakeholder engagement; messaging insights. Link them to the work sample.

  • If you implemented a listening loop to get feedback from stakeholders throughout the campaign, include that information.

  • What roadblocks did you anticipate? How did you plan to minimize challenges and respond if/when they arose?

Sec. 6: Measurement and evaluation.

  • Outcomes are the most important thing to measure! You want to prove that your project made an impact on the business need.

  • When possible, express impact as return on investment (ROI).

  • Measure knowledge, attitudes and especially behaviours to see whether objectives were met. If they weren’t met, offer some reasons and outline what you might do differently next time.

  • If the campaign was run in partnership with other departments, isolate and identify the amount that the communication campaign contributed to the success.

So if you’ve been thinking about entering this year’s Silver Leaf Awards, we encourage you to go for it! 

Regardless of whether you score an award this year, we’re sure it will be a valuable learning experience.

IABC Waterloo has made a donation to The Literacy Group as an expression of gratitude to our webinar presenters (in order of appearance): Maureen Healey; Priya Bates; Shel Holtz; Dr. Amanda Hamilton-Attwell; Angela Sinickas; Zora Artis and Jonathan Champ.

Mirko Petricevic CMP®️ is a professional development director with IABC Waterloo. He led the Ink-stained Wretches campaign for local journalism that earned a Silver Leaf Award of Excellence and Gold Quill Award of Merit. Read about the campaign in Catalyst. Contact him at mirko@stonemirmedia.com 


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