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Just opening up a conversation about awards –
“You have been nominated for an award’
I have had emails from an awarding body that led with that headline and messaging
It was from UKBEA Business Awarding Body about a nomination BrandStorm has received for a British Business Excellence Award.
However after finding out a bit more it seems it is just a £200 payment to accept the award and be hosted on their website and receive a Certificate & Badge.
Seems a bit of a scam to be honest and I would rather know that there was a process of actually being nominated by someone I know first rather simply paying for an award.
What’s your experience of being nominated for awards?
- Has anyone nominated you for an award in the past?
- Have you ever nominated yourself for an award?
- Would you simply pay for an award so you could shout about it to raise your profile.
GO!!!
Stuart Morrison, Lisa Woolnough and Rob Fryer11 Comments-
Sadly, having worked within the events industry for almost 10 years, these ‘awards’ are mostly money making schemes, and/or self appointed. That’s not to say that they are worthless, of course. Because brand awareness is brand awareness, regardless of how we get it!
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@hannah Yeah I like to think it was part of a shortlisting process at least but It seems more like I was just a name pulled out of a hat. Nothing really to do with my level of service or offering etc. Thats not to say it’s not tempting to grab it and use it to boost a bit of awareness or credibility and call myself an ‘Award Winning’ Brand Specialist.
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I have come across this before – I think it was Prestige Awards – they take your money and give you an award….. not really ethical in my book.
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@lisawoolnough yeah I think this is how I feel about this particular one.
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A lot of them do have shortlisting processes, and you were probably Julie’s our as a key player in your vertical. And there is definitely some social proof to come from being an award winner!
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We have been finalists in the Service Provider of the Year awards last year, winners of the Theo Paphitis SBS Award, and are finalists in the Allica Bank Great British Entrepeneur Awards, and finalists in three categories at the Business Success Network awards in September.
Have we paid to enter any of those awards? No, but we have paid to be at the award winners dinner/presentation for the Allica Bank awards at the Dorchester Hotel in London and we have paid to be at the finals dinner/presentation at the Business Success Network awards in Stratford upon Avon but I guess that’s a bit different in that we are paying for the evening dinner, entertainment and networking opportunities rather than the award itself.
Have we nominated ourselves for any of these awards? Yes in one of the categories at the Business Success Network awards and we nominated ourselves for the Theo Paphitis awards, but the others we were nominated for by our clients.
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@keithbudden123 Wow – firstly congrats Keith.👏
I would definitely rather be a finalist or even simply shortlisted based on a recommendation or an entry I had submitted, than have an award I simply paid for with out any effort or qualifying procedure.
I know you usually have to pay for the awards evenings if you are finalists or shortlisted etc and that is fine as you are paying for the event and being part of the occasion not just the award. Good insights though and great achievement.Also interested what difference or added benefits you’ve seen to your business from being award finalists and being recognised for your efforts.
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@robfryer-brandstorm I think in terms of added benefits I would say improved new client conversion rates (and to be honest that didn’t happen when we only had one award/finalist badge, but now our email signature looks like the attached image, I think (hope!) the number of accreditations helps build customer (and perhaps more importantly potential customer) engagement that we must be doing something right – although, I’d put a note of caution on that, we did have one potential client who almost didn’t approach us for a quote as they felt “with that track record, you must be expensive” – which is not the case. I also had one of our competitors who felt we must have a team of at least 10 people so when I said no, we were just 2.5 FTE people they nearly fell off their chair 🤣
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@keithbudden123 has a point, it does look impressive when used in an email footer.
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Interesting…and pat on the back Rob – whatever the deal. someone will have looked it in some detail I guess. Though I’m mostly a bit sceptical unless really well known award. Because it was free we entered this – https://www.londonconstructionawards.com/2025-finalists – and were shortlisted but one ticket to the evening event is £400+ . So not likely to go further than a shortlist this time – I don’t think you can win unless you pay for a ticket. I think we knew it would be a cost of some kind before entering but maybe being on a shortlist is worth the hour or so to put together the entry. Not sure actually!
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@ivan That’s what I had hoped initially but after further investigation I am not so sure.
I don’t know whether going to the awards event itself or not hampers your chance of winning once you get nominated or shortlisted. They probably assume most will go for a good team night out. Interesting though!!
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