Keep it simple.

What do I mean? Well, put yourself in the shoes of an award judge for a moment. You will be reviewing 10, maybe 20 submissions. When was the last time you read that much? Written by mostly non-professional writers?

That’s why it’s critical to keep it simple. By that I mean:

- Be obvious. Your story must be easy to understand. A is followed by B, which is followed by C. Everything is logically sequenced and tied together.

Remember that your judge/s know/s nothing about your program/product/team/etc. so you have to make everything very, very clear.

Ask yourself whether you can picture a judge nodding her head as she reads along. If YOU don’t nod your head as you are reading along your draft, and rework it until you do.

- Use plain English. I don’t mean dumb things down, I mean say things as plainly as possible. Don’t over-complicate. Choose the five-cent word over the 10-cent word.

Remember, the writing here is just a means to an end: winning. Flowery language and/or long, compound sentences will not help your cause, nor will excessive buzzwords (and please, etch this in your memory: “incentivize” is not a word).

- Use English, and selective jargon. Avoid what I like to call the quirky lingua franca spoken on your corporate planet. No one knows what any of your acronyms mean, for example.

DO use jargon appropriate to the context, i.e. if you are applying for a learning award, as many of my clients do, you should surely use learning terminology.

- Just the facts, ma’am. There is a lot to say about any potentially award-winning project/product/team/etc. Pare it down to the essentials. Know the difference between details that will help you win and details that are extraneous, and delete the latter.

It might be helpful to show your draft to someone in another department, or to a colleague in the same field but at another company (assuming they are not applying for the same award!).

The person should know just enough about the subject matter to be able to follow along but not so much about the specifics that they cannot see the forest for the trees (like you and your team).

A Few Words from the Wise

In closing, some inspiration from two greats who knew how to make an impact:

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” - Leonardo da Vinci

“Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.” – Coco Chanel

Stay tuned for tip #6: Be concise.

More tips!

Tip #4: Tell a Good Story

Tip #3: Start Early

Tip #2: Read the Question

Tip #1: Know Who You’re Talking To

From time to time, communicators can get stuck on how to explain a particular idea, product, etc. Yes, even ME.

I have a friend named Pat who is a talented chef and a generally smart person.

Sometimes when I am feeling that I haven’t sufficiently simplified a concept, I take her out to lunch and run it by her. Usually that does the trick.

Who is your Pat?

At a Columbia alumni event this week, I got into a conversation with an interesting guy who’d spent 10 days in Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

This blog is certainly no place for politics, but suffice it to say that “perception is reality” came up.

And it’s also true in organizations. And families. And all human relationships.

I’ve recently begun working on an internal strategic communications plan for a global pharma company, and have conducted interviews with both deliverers and recipients of communications to better understand goals, needs and gaps.

Here, too, perception is reality: organizations within large corporations need to manage their image, especially if they are a cost center. They need to do PR-like activities and marketing to their internal customers/clients.

Because if those clients perceive that you aren’t doing anything meaningful with the budget they’ve given you, that budget goes away, even if you made an incredible impact…and just weren’t effective at letting them know.

Thankfully, internal communications aren’t a matter of life and death. But some of the same rules apply as in the world’s greatest conflicts.

Plan accordingly.

In the latest issue of BRAINSNACKS, my nifty newsletter, I talked about the proliferation of QR codes and mentioned a few examples.

Here are the deets:

Nordstrom - Having wiled away an afternoon at the Laura Mercier counter, I came home, of course, with the business cards of the woman who made me up and the woman who rang me up. On the back of both: QR codes with the contact information for these ultra-modern salespeople.

American Express – A sign outside my optometrist’s office promoted Small Business Saturday (see just a bit of what they were able to program into one tiny code here). The website looks eerily like Obama’s 2008 campaign. Hmm…

MoMA – An exhibition called Talk to Me: : Design and the Communication between People and Objects, which “focuses on objects that involve a direct interaction, such as interfaces, information systems, visualization design, and communication devices, and on projects that establish an emotional, sensual, or intellectual connection with their users.” – including QR codes. I caught it just before it closed on November 7.

Local Seattle realtor – A QR code on some empty commercial property in my neighborhood led to detailed information about the space and various one-click contact links, including a “call” button in the top right corner.

Got some great examples to share? Please comment!

Spotted on a recent trip to Chicago (where I was visiting a client I’ve helped to win eight awards in the past year and a half), on my way back to the hotel after a phenomenal dinner at MK.

This bus stop advertisement made me feel right at home in the Windy City.

p.s. Chicago really is a great town. My favorite guilty pleasure? The inimitable Chicago hot dog. You read it here first.

Sometimes I really wonder how a former New Yorker/Israeli can survive in a docile domicile like Seattle.

Today, as I stepped off the curb near my apartment to check for traffic before crossing the street, the approaching car in each direction stopped to let me cross. There was no crosswalk. There was no stop sign. There was no stop light.

WHUT?

It’s become the new normal for me, and while I enjoy it does still unnerve me a bit. I mean, it’s just not natural.

Communication, too, is different out here. There’s no yelling. There’s no raising of voices. There’s not even sarcasm (East Coasters often bemoan the general lack of irony used – or even understood – by locals).

So I found it amusing and endearing to find this note on my windshield after having inadvertently, indeed, partially parked in front of someone’s driveway.

Classic.

One of the most important things I learned in business school is a truism I apply in my communications work all the time:

To effect change, you must first create dissatisfaction with the status quo.

This summer I’ve been working with an amazing client who is building a program from the ground up for the largest division of a global corporation. Big stuff. Major.

In helping her develop her presentation to key stakeholders, i.e. to “sell” them on her program and get their buy-in, this concept was critical.

Before we could get any of these senior leaders to care about her solution, we had to first convince them that there was a problem that needed fixing (see Tip #4 on telling a good story). And, they had to feel that it was THEIR problem.

We outlined the presentation as a series of objectives:

1. Create dissatisfaction with the status quo: In this case, share survey and interview results reflecting both employee and management complaints about the situation, and the potential negative business impact.

2. Help them feel ready to change status quo: Despite a bleak situation, there is hope – the surveys and interviews also led to insights about what is needed, and there is a plan to address those needs that is wholly aligned with the business’s strategic objectives.

3. Drive acceptance of the plan to change the status quo: Present a logical sequence and connection between needs and solution, and make explicit the expected benefits to the audience (and again, links to corporate objectives).

4. Enlist the audience with calls to action: Now that they’re convinced, get them on board and make them a part of the solution.

This is essentially an actualization of Beckhard’s change equation, a very useful formula for driving transition/transformation (see diagram, left).

The key to a great presentation, like a great award submission, is telling a compelling story, drawing your audience in with a vivid narrative. But it’s also knowing what you have to do to change minds, perceptions, preferences, priorities.

This presentation was later modified for a meeting with the C-level executive who heads the division and all of his direct reports. She’d need to make a budget ask for the next year, right then and there.

My client was so persuasive that she was given 50 minutes instead of 30, was offered more budget than she asked for and received a round of applause at the end.

Helping my client achieve this huge win is incredibly exciting and indescribably rewarding.

So remember: to sell the solution, first sell the problem.

I started writing content for Web sites in 1995 – pretty much from the beginning of it all. I don’t do much of it any more, preferring strategic internal communications and awards as my bread-n-butter.

But a client had a need and there I was. And it was great, because the clients were great and the team was great. We put our heads together and in ONE MONTH launched a significant internal site.

I thought the project was pretty cool. Turns out I wasn’t the only one: the very impressive Web lead/information architect Chris Detzi from the super talented EightShapes wrote this blog post about it, and I thought I’d share.

Check it out:

Tell a good story.

Yep. Weave a tale. Beginning, middle, end. Drama in between.

If you’re going for an award, that means (ostensibly) that you did something important. And if it really was important, then the story should be fairly simple to tell.

The straightforward formula:

1. Problem: Things were bad. They were really bad. Or, depending on the situation, things were pretty good…but there was an opportunity to make them even better.

2. Solution: Here’s the brilliant thing we did and how we came up with it and made it work.

3. Outcome: Now we prove that we made a difference – a big difference – using metrics. No metrics? No award (pretty much).

It’s the formula for every case study, and it should be the formula for every successful award submission.

Some more tips:

-Use big adjectives: Exceptional, exciting, outstanding, extraordinary. If you don’t burst with enthusiasm, why will the judge?

-Include details: They bring a story alive, and help to support your narrative (i.e. we did something important).

-Be saucy: OK, maybe not saucy, but definitely not boring. Judges have many, many submissions to read and if you keep them entertained, they’ll like you.

-Don’t be afraid to use humor: A judge who’s just read 15 long applications will see yours very favorably if you make her laugh.

And now for some advice from a real master: check out this video series on storytelling from Ira Glass of This American Life.

More tips!

Tip #3: Start Early

Tip #2: Read the Question

Tip #1: Know Who You’re Talking To

OK, I’ve never actually been a radio star, though I did once produce and host a jazz show on Israel’s first and only (and last, I believe) all-English radio station.

“Evening Jazz with Deb Arnold” was one of the best and funnest things I’ve ever done, and some day I’ll even convert my show tapes into CDs and relive the glory days.

But in the meantime, I’ve discovered this brilliant new medium that serves as a productive outlet for my desires to entertain as well as inform. Case in point, my holiday greeting video (yes, I WILL milk it for all it’s worth!).

So here goes my first “vlog” (I don’t need to translate that, do I?):

Deb’s Inaugural Vlog