Category strategy is the entry. Everything else is admin.

When agencies tell me they're 'putting work into the awards', the first thing I ask isn't what work. It's which category.

Nine times out of ten, the answer is the wrong one.

Picking the right category is the entry. The writing, the case study, the supporting evidence - all of it follows from the category, and almost none of it can save a wrong category choice. Jurors don't rewrite your case study for you, and they don't move it laterally if they think it belongs somewhere else.

What jurors are actually doing

A juror at any of the big shows - Cannes, BIMA, the Effies, Creative Circle, Campaign's Big Awards - sits down with a stack of fifty or sixty entries in a category. They read them in a sitting. They score them against the criteria of that category. They are not, in any meaningful sense, comparing across categories.

This is the move most agencies miss. The category isn't a label on the entry - it's the framework jurors use to rank.

A juror in Effectiveness is asking: did the work move the commercial number, and is the connection between the idea and the number unambiguously argued?

A juror in Craft is asking: at the level of execution, is this a piece of work the industry's craft community is going to want to learn from?

A juror in Strategy is asking: did the strategy do unusual work - a non-obvious insight, an original target, a planning move that became the campaign?

A juror in Effectiveness does not care if your craft was beautiful. A juror in Craft doesn't care if your sales lifted. Same campaign, three categories, three different stories, three different shortlists.

The category-to-evidence test

The simplest test for "is this the right category?" is the evidence test.

Take your strongest single piece of evidence - the one number, quote, piece of cultural traction or behavioural data that you'd lead the entry with. Now ask: in which category would a juror care most about that evidence?

• A 22% lift in unaided brand recall is Brand Effectiveness.
• A culturally-talked-about film that lived for six months past the campaign window is Craft / Film or Direction.
• A targeting decision that doubled the reach inside the actual buyer set is Strategy or Media.
• A new format that the industry is going to copy is Innovation or Channel-specific.

If your strongest evidence doesn't fit the category you're entering, you're entering the wrong category.

When to enter twice (and when not to)

Most awards let you enter the same work in multiple categories. Some agencies enter every category that the brief covers; others refuse to enter twice on principle.

The honest answer: enter twice when the story changes. Enter once when the story is the same.

If you can write a different lede, a different evidence stack and a different argument for two categories, both entries are defensible and might both shortlist. If you're submitting essentially the same case study with the category name swapped in the title, the juror knows. Jury chairs talk to each other; cross-category duplicates get noticed; agency reputations for category-stuffing build over years.

Enter twice when there are two stories. Don't when there's one.

Where in the process the category gets chosen

The expensive mistake is choosing categories at the deadline. The right time to choose is when the work is still in market.

Six months out, the question is: which juror story is this work going to tell? That decision drives which evidence to capture during the campaign - the surveys, the behavioural data, the press coverage, the talent quotes. Different categories want different evidence. If you decide too late, the evidence isn't there, and the case study is a salvage operation.

Three months out, you should know which categories you're entering and which evidence each one needs. The case study draft starts here.

One month out, you're cutting. Most entries are written long and need three rounds of cuts to be retellable.

Deadline week, you submit. Submission week is not a writing week. If you're writing the entry in submission week, the category choice was probably wrong, and the entry will read like one.

The two categories most agencies miss

Two categories quietly produce better odds for thoughtful agency entries.

One - Strategy. Strategy categories often have fewer entries than Effectiveness and Craft, because most agencies under-pitch their own strategy. If the work was strategically interesting, the entry has a better chance in Strategy than in Effectiveness, even if the commercial numbers are good. Jurors in Strategy reward originality of thinking more than they reward scale of result.

Two - Channel-specific or format-specific. The big general categories are crowded. The channel-specific ones - radio, podcast, social-specific formats, OOH, B2B - often have fewer high-effort entries. If your work fits one cleanly, you're competing against a smaller field of less polished case studies.

What to do this week

If you're considering entries for any show with a deadline in the next quarter:

1. List the work that's eligible. Be honest about what's strong enough.
2. For each piece, write the single sentence that lead juror in your strongest candidate category would want to hear.
3. If you can't write that sentence cleanly, the category is wrong. Try the next one. Keep going until the sentence writes itself.
4. Once the category is chosen, start capturing the evidence the category wants - now, while the work is still in market. Surveys, screenshots, sales data, press cuttings, talent quotes.
5. Only then start writing the entry.

The agencies that win consistently aren't writing better entries. They're choosing better categories - earlier.