Hints & Tips for Winning Awards

I’m very lucky to judge many different awards ranging from mobile industry specific ones like the Meffys and the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards to ones that are not immersed in mobile like the Sony Radio Academy Awards and the Wirehive 100 to innovation awards like Vodafone Mobile Clicks and Vodafone Foundation Smart Accessibility Awards. As such, over the years, I’ve seen many awards entries and see what a winning entry looks like.

Since it’s the run up to the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards, David Murphy, Editor, Mobile Marketing Magazine, asked a selection of judges to join a Tweet Chat to discuss this year’s entries – what was good, what was lacking and what we’d like to see more of. It was a really interesting discussion with Rob Thurner, Russell Buckley, myself and James Cameron. You can see the collection of tweets over on Mobile Marketing Magazine http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/awards-preview-judges-twitter-panel

Some common mistakes creep in to these things. Often the task of filling in the form is delegated to someone junior or someone who has not been hands on with the campaign. I still see a lack of evidence. Saying something along the lines of ‘the client was really happy with the results’ just doesn’t cut it. You could have the coolest sounding concept, but if you can’t tell the judges what the results were, then we can’t judge you and your entry will be discarded. I also see entries that have not answered the questions and also have clearly been cut and pasted from a case study or press release which means it can be harder to discover the nuggets of information that you need to judge one entry over another. And I see entries for categories where I really can’t see the connection at all. So my advice is, keep it to the point, answer the questions and justify why you deserve to win the award with actual demonstration of innovation, originality, effectiveness etc. And include the numbers. The information is kept private and is not published. Be proud of your work and take the time to communicate why it’s so good with the judges. Make our jobs harder each time!

If you’re interested to see who made the shortlist (and there are some fab companies and campaigns on that list), you can find more information here http://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/awards/ and you can also book your tickets to the Award Ceremony on 29th November. I think there are a handful of tickets left. If the last two years are anything to go by, it should be a good night.

I recently talked about this stuff for the MEFFYs too on video which you also may find useful.

So for the next time you enter an award, best of luck and don’t let yours be the entry that gets discarded for not completing the entry form properly.

New Media Age Award Nomination

I’m absolutely thrilled to bits to be nominated for a New Media Age Award for The Greatest Contribution to New Media by an individual. Swedish Beers and the Heroes of the Mobile Fringe Festival gets a mention in the write-up. I'm in such good company too, I'm not sure how I managed to sneak my way on to the list, but I’m very pleased I did.

Anyway, if you feel so inclined, and you have a UK mobile, you can vote for me by SMS until 27 April 2012. Text NMA3 to 82100 if you'd like to vote for me and it's a standard rate text. The text service is provided by Sponge so you know you’ll be in good hands. More details about the awards, the other nominees and how to vote for them here http://www.nmaawards.co.uk/GIC2012.aspx. The winner will be announced at the awards ceremony on 28 June 2012.

Thank you to the NMA editorial team for including me in this year’s nominations and thanks to everyone voting for me. You’ve made this technokitten very happy.

MiM Award 2012 deadline is 4 March 2012

The MiM Award 2012 (deadline 4th March; finals 22nd March) are go and I’m very pleased to be on of their judges this year. There’s always a good selection of mobile apps and services to look at and I hope this year’s is no different. It’s free to enter and by entering, The MiM Award can get you in front of customers, investors and the press. The MiM Award is for privately owned mobile businesses that are making their customers' businesses mobile.

"For Masabi, winning the BLN MiM Award has been a real boost. In particular winning the award facing such strong competition, and having been judged by a wide range of respected industry experts and investors, has been terrific for the company in terms of raising awareness and building credibility. On
the back of this platform, Masabi has continued to generate significant momentum, securing new customers and launching new products. If you want to raise your profile with decision makers in the mobile world, you should definitely enter the MiM Award 2012." -- CEO, Masabi

How does it work? Mobile businesses (that's you!) spend 2 minutes applying here before the deadline at midnight 4th March 2012. It's free to apply. Twelve finalists will be chosen to present at MiM 2012 (22nd March) and our judges choose a winner. Easy.  So get that laptop out and get filling in the form.

The Mobile Premier Awards opens – and there’s an award for female entrepreneurs

You might be familiar with the Global Peer Awards that Rudy de Waele has been running in partnership with Mobile Monday for the last few years in Barcelona. Well, he’s now extended the concept to include more networks, including the Women in Mobile Data Association (see us on Facebook and LinkedIn) and has launched The Mobile Premier Awards 2010 and it is now open for entries.

The Mobile Premier Awards recognize the year’s best in Mobile Start-up Innovation and are the largest open, global start-up competition in the mobile industry. The awards are the point of reference in start-up premiers during the Mobile World Congress on February 15, 2010 in Barcelona (yes, it’s nearly that time of year again) and are organized in collaboration with some of the main networks in the mobile industry.

We’re particularly excited about the award for female entrepreneurship… Anyway, more details about the whole shebang here. It’s free to enter and it seems to me to be exciting to be involved in it with both my Mobile Monday London hat and my Women in Mobile Data Association hat on. (Good job I like wearing hats eh).

The Mobile Premier Awards 2010 will include the following awards:

* MPA in Innovation - The best grassroots start-up innovation chosen by their peers in partnership with Mobile Monday. The Mobile Monday chapters will vote for their local most innovative start-up. An international jury of the most recognized mobile industry experts will select the 20 finalists from all the local chapter nominees to pitch at the event in Barcelona in front of investors, operators, media companies, peer entrepreneurs, and press and influential bloggers.

* MPA in Marketing - The best start-up in Mobile Marketing

* MPA in Entertainment - The best start-up in Mobile Entertainment in partnership with the Mobile Entertainment Forum

* MPA in User Experience - The best start-up in Mobile User Experience in partnership with MEX.

* MPA in Social Change - The best start-up using mobile for social change in partnership with Mobile Active.org

* MPA in Female Entrepreneurship - The best woman-led mobile start-up in partnership with Women2.0 and the Women in Mobile Data Association

Participation to these awards is free and open to any start-up with a mobile angle. Go to www.mobilepremierawards.com and take your chance to walk the red carpet in Barcelona!

Technorati Tags: mobile,women,wimd,women in mobile data,mobile peer awards,mobile premier awards,global peer awards,mobile monday,mobile monday london,mobile world congress,barcelona,start-up,entrepreneurship

Meffys Awards entry deadline extended to 24th April due to popular demand

And yours truly, Helen Keegan, will be on the judging panel for the Mobile Advertising Award. Something I’m actually rather excited about.

Anyway, the key point is that the entry deadline for the awards has been extended to the 24th April so you still have another week to get your entry in. The official blurb and details are below for you all. It is pay to enter the awards, but don’t let that put you off entering, it’s still worthwhile and I do know that previous MoMoLo members who have entered the awards in previous years have benefitted, so please do consider it. There are a wide range of categories to choose from and think carefully about which ones to enter. I’ve judged other things before and am frustrated when something is submitted into the wrong category and fails when had it been submitted to a more appropriate category, it would have stood a chance of winning. So think on!

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Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF), the global association for the mobile media industry, today announces that due to popular demand, the call for entries for the sixth international Meffys Mobile Entertainment Awards has been extended to Friday 24^th April 2009. Companies wishing to enter should visit: www.m-e-f.org. 

MEF is also pleased to announce that Hardeep Singh Kohli, a leading social commentator, BBC presenter and comedian, will host the Meffys ceremony on 23 June in London. As a columnist for The Scotsman and The Guardian, and a great fan of mobile games, Hardeep is passionate about the increasingly important role that mobile entertainment is playing in our everyday lives and says, “I am delighted to be hosting this year’s Meffys awards to help celebrate the leading companies in an industry where creativity and cutting-edge technology collide”.

Entering the Meffys 2009

MEF is accepting entries for the 2009 Meffys awards until 24 April. Entry costs have been frozen from last year and are as follows: £100 per entry for MEF members, £200 for members of supporting organisations and £300 for non-members.

For more details and information on entry categories go to: http://www.m-e-f.org/index.php?id=44

Meffys 2009 Categories:

• Games
• Music Service
• TV & Video Service
• Technology Innovation
• Content
• Social Networking
• Search & Discovery
• Ad Campaign
• Application
• Quality of Experience
• D2C Service
• ‘Mobile First’ Innovation
• Business Intelligence
• Innovative Business Model
• Handset

If you do decide to enter, good luck!

Technorati Tags: awards,meffy's,mobile entertainment forum,momolo,mobile monday london,mobile entertainment,judging

Female Social Media Guru UK Awards

Vote for me now (please)!

The award serves to celebrate the wealth of female speakers and practitioners of social media living in UK. In doing so its objective is to challenge the current under-representation of females on event panels by offering a high profile platform for women (something I’ve, ahem, mentioned before here once or twice).

Anyway, I’m thrilled to have been nominated (thanks to David Cushman) and would love to get to the final five so I get a chance to strut my stuff. That said, I’m in excellent company and I’d be very happy to see any of these ladies reach the final five. I’m genuinely interested to hear what they have to say.

If you’ve never seen or heard me speak before and are wondering whether or not I deserve your vote, then check out this blog post and video clip on The Future of Mobile. It’s only 6 minutes but I think is representative of what I can do. There are other videos and podcasts of me lurking around the internet too should you be interested in googling for them!

So, vote for me now – you’ll have to scroll down to the end of the poll almost to get to Helen Keegan but it’ll be worth it ;)

Thanks in advance! 

Technorati Tags: social media,guru,awards,uk,presentation,speaker,conference,women,events

Tuesday linkage

It is Tuesday right? And it is March already (how did that happen)? So it must be time for some links.

This is an interesting post from the Admob blog about iphone advertisers best practice. I would say that quite a few of those tips and hints are relevant for anyone doing stuff in mobile advertising. It’s not exactly rocket science (but then mobile advertising isn’t) but it’s good to be reminded of the simple stuff every now and then. And this is a great checklist.

Bango is also running an interesting experiment in running a mobile website, Mobislim. They have a real mobile website set up and are sharing all the analytics, results, learnings and more with their audience in a blog format. If you are a mobile webmaster looking to commercialise your offering, this is well worth keeping an eye on.

If stats are your thing then have a look at MSearchGroove’s post covering stats around mobile web traffic, mobile search and advertising. Peggy Anne Salz has some interesting insight and links to share.

There was a little flurry of excitement about Process Away recently and their iphone App. Agreed, it looks really good and looks like a great solution to be able to take payments at your live event without a huge investment in hardware, software, wifi and the rest. That I don’t doubt. But who are they and why would I trust them with my money? And even looking at the FAQs, that doesn’t reassure me much. Seeing as folks making business decisions about technology are very often  not technologists, the technology jargon about security is meaningless. Some explanation of who you are, some reassurance that customer’s money is safe, some reassurance of how the service is underwritten and this could be a real goer. Or am I being a curmudgeon here?

I’ve been asked to be a judge for 2009’s Mobile Messaging Awards which is very exciting. Get those entries in! I’m also judging this year’s Webby Awards… still very North American in its focus which is a shame as I firmly believe there is mobile talent beyond those shores. I guess there’s always next year to enter…

Technorati Tags: links,mobile,statistics,m-commerce,m-payments,m-retail,m-transactions,awards,160characters,mobile web,mobile internet,admob,mobile advertising,iphone

Realeyes 3D win again

Realeyes 3D are doing some very cool things with mobile phones. By simply moving your phone, you can move around pictures and websites. You can check out how it works over at youtube. In fact, it's such a cool application, that not only did it win the Momo Global Peer Award at 3GSM in Barcelona this year, but they've also just landed a Red Herring 100 Europe award. This annual award is given to the top 100 private technology companies based in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa). Well done Realeyes 3D and let's hope with this success, the software will be installed on more cameraphones hitting the market.

Qwikker and Virgin Bites are up for a 3GSM Award

Qwikker, the mobile content distribution company, is up for an award for its work with Virgin Mobile (who incidentally 'don't believe in mobile marketing' or so it was claimed at a Virgin meeting I attended a few months ago!). The award they're up for is 'Best Mobile Advertising' category.

To keep Virgin Mobile customers amused, Qwikker created 'boredom busters' for Virgin BITES service. Also part of the promotion, Virgin Mobile wanted to reach beyond their own subscriber base and also promote acts at the V-Festivals by distributing mobile content via bluetooth.

Qwikker’s service enabled consumers to download the non-intrusive [sic], branded Virgin Bites mobile channel, via Bluetooth, and browse and select music-related mobile content, which was relevant to them. Critically the Virgin content channel remained on the consumers’ handset, which is updateable over-the-air (OTA) – further extending the brand relationship.

As the service is for Virgin customers only, I can't try it out to tell you exactly how it works. Nor was I at V-Festival to try it. And I'm wondering how many people actually played around with the system when they could be seeing live bands or drinking instead? Now *that* would be interesting to know more about rather than the concept per se.

If the O2 wireless festival is anything to go by, or FourDocs bluetooth poster campaign or the Casino Royale bluetooth cinema campaigns are anything to go by, there could be a high failure rate - none of the afore-mentioned campaigns worked on my phone :( - none of them were run by Qwikker AFAIK.

Having looked at the Qwikker website, I'm guessing it's a java based download which updates over the air in a similar way to mobizines.If you're in a Qwikker location (pub or London Underground station) then you may get a bluetooth message asking you if you want to receive the content and at that point you 'opt-in'. The trouble is, in sending the message to your phone at all, you haven't opted-in. Having spoken to some people in this area, because that initial message *isn't* stored on the phone, it's ok to send it and isn't covered by the European Data Privacy rules. I have *no* idea why that is acceptable rather than a text message per se. It's just as intrusive, it's just as time-consuming to deal with (or not) as a text message and it's still an electronic message. And I am yet to see a reliable bluetooth delivery system. Hmm, I'm not convinced. Come on Qwikker - convince me that bluetooth is ready for the masses and that my personal experiences are not the norm. I want to be convinced...

I wish Qwikker the best of luck with the award and with their service, but I don't see why it should be one rule for bluespam and another for text spam (equally odious IMHO). The direct mail analogy is that Junk Mail is equivalent to a text message but a Bluetooth notification is the equivalent of a door-drop - the difference being that you don't have the address (mobile number) of the recipient. You still end up with junk on your doormat (phone). Hmm, the vagaries of European law!

The GSM Association’s Global Mobile awards will be presented at 3GSM 2007, Barcelona on the 13^th February. More information is available at GSM Awards.