The Award Entry Checklist: What to Do, And What to Avoid
By Gabriel Tan | June 2026
I judged this year's International Business Awards, in artificial intelligence (AI), technology and sustainability. This pulls the three posts in the series into one working list, in the order you would use it. Keep it open while you write your entry.
Before you write
Read the criteria for your category twice. Note what each line actually scores. Most reward outcomes far above description.
Lay your evidence against the criteria. Enter the category your strongest material fits, even if it is not the one you assumed.
Check the timing. Make sure your result has already happened and has run long enough to judge. If the strong part is still ahead of you, you may be a year early.
List your figures, and beside each one write who can vouch for it. A third party, an auditor, a regulator, a published benchmark, or only yourself.
Decide your single strongest piece of proof before you draft a line. It is going to open the entry.
As you write
Open with that strongest proof in the first two sentences. The history, the method, and the context come after it.
Lead every adoption number with the behaviour it changed. A user count shows people arrived, not that anything moved.
Set each result that matters against an outside figure. A peer, an industry average, a published benchmark. Beating your own target only shows you can plan.
Show that your product caused the result. Name what else could have driven it, and rule that out.
Claim only what has already happened. Write any projection as a target, in plain sight, never as a result.
Put a checkable source next to every figure that matters. Where there is none, write self-reported and leave it visible.
Say it in plain words. If a line needs reading twice, cut it. Platform language that hides what the product does works against you.
Make the written entry carry the whole case. Treat any attachment or video as something the judge may never open.
End on your strongest fact, not your biggest adjective.
Before you submit
Read the entry aloud, as if the attachments do not exist. If the words alone do not make the case, fix that first.
Sweep for any claim that is a plan rather than a result. Cut it, or label it a target.
Check that every big number names a source a judge could verify.
Read the final third on its own. Delete any sentence that reaches for a grand word in place of a fact.
Stop at the point your case is made. The word limit is a ceiling, not a target. An entry that makes its case in two thirds of the limit reads as sure of itself.
Confirm the category still fits your strongest evidence.
Red flags that cost you the judge
Scan the finished entry for these. Each one drains attention or belief, and one is enough to pull down the parts that were real.
A user or impression count offered as impact.
A target you set yourself, beaten, offered as proof you lead.
A change claimed as yours that your product only sat beside.
Three paragraphs of platform language before anyone can say what the product does.
The real proof parked in a file the judge has to download, or a video they may not watch.
An entry padded to the last hundred words, the final third repeating the first.
A projection written as though it had already happened.
A headline number only your own company stands behind.
A supporting document named in the text but never attached.
Grand language, world-leading and a new era, where the proof ran out.
Gabriel Tan is the founder of Mekong Bridge Advisory. He builds structured execution systems for PR and communications firms.
info@mekongbridge.com| www.mekongbridge.com
