Creative Competitions and Awards for Universities, Schools, Educational Institutions and Charities

Judging panel recruitment

We can research and identify ideal judges to recruit into your panel from whatever academic subject or industry vertical required.  We specialise in recruiting influential and celebrity judges from the worlds of entertainment, the arts, business, and law, which can bring major attention and PR coverage to your competition.

Throughout our consultation on judging, we will advise on what requirements there are for legal and regulatory compliance, such as the need for independent judges.  We can also help draft codes of practice or codes of ethics for your judges to adhere to.

Sponsorships and prizes

We can broker sponsorship deals to provide funding, prizes and judges to your competition.  We have worked with the likes of Deloitte, Co-Op, PWC and Clyde & Co, who have offered valuable “money can’t buy” prizes like work experience, employability training and workshops.

Sponsors are often willing to provide senior colleagues as judges and can bring a wealth of expertise to a judging panel.

Events

Though it is entirely possible to run competitions and awards online, in person events still form a highly useful opportunity for potential students, members, donors and sponsors to meet, tour academic facilities, and register their interest.

Entry moderation and marking criteria

Our dedicated moderation team can handle tens of thousands of entries and save your organisation days, weeks, or months of work in shortlisting entries for your judging panel.  We can work to external marketing criteria, or help you write your own criteria for both shortlisting and judging, to ensure maximum effectiveness of your competition or award and reducing risks and errors in the winner selection process.

Legal and compliance

For any competition or awards campaign, it is vital that the promoter is with the relevant regulations and laws.  We can advise on promotional compliance and ensure all aspects of a campaign are water tight.

Web design and development

We specialise in competition and award microsites and campaign landing pages and entry mechanics, allowing promoters to beautifully market their campaign, and allowing entrants to easily and quickly upload their entries on any device.  Our back end technology allows for easy reporting, moderation, export and CRM activities.

Marketing and PR

We can massively boost traffic, entrants, links and PR coverage to creative competitions and awards in the following ways:

Academic, arts and industry influencers

We outreach and broker relationships with social media influencers across academic subjects, the arts, and industry verticals.

Industry and mainstream press PR

We can obtain coverage in educational and industry publications, both offline and online, building inbound links as we go.

School, university and careers networks

We have extensive relationships with school, higher education and careers networks, and can negotiate promotion of your campaign to school, university and careers leaders and officers.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

We can develop and optimise your campaign site and content to rank for important keywords, building your competition or awards into a long term traffic source which can drive admissions, membership or revenue even when your campaign is not active.  Link building through outreach and PR can add further SEO benefit.

PPC and Paid Social

We can target the optimal audience and drive traffic to your campaign via Google and Bing PPC, and paid social media through Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Tiktok, Reddit and Quora.  We can identify school leavers, applicants for clearing, groups with specific interests, geographies and ages.