Most of the major awards in the hairdressing industry don’t open for entries for several months, but it’s not too early to start planning.
Many hairdressing awards, including HJ’s British Hairdressing Business Awards and Creative Head’s Most Wanted, have the same, or similar, categories each year, so you can start researching which awards and categories you want to enter now.
Have a think about what your brand values are, whether you’re a salon owner a stylist, or a freelance dynamo making a massive impact on the hairdressing world. Which of the awards most match these values? Which would you most like your brand to be associated with?
Once you’ve decided on the awards, think about which category or categories you want to enter. Sometimes it’s best to focus on one or two rather than try and sweep the board and take on too much work – putting together a comprehensive awards entry can be time consuming! The last thing you want to do is take on too much and the entries not represent you faithfully.
Many of the award categories require a lot of written work – most require you to put together some kind of dossier, providing evidence of why you or your business deserves to win. Bear in mind, as you’re putting your entry together, that the judges will potentially be reading dozens of other entries for the same category, and yours could be the last one they come to. Try and make the writing engaging and inject your personality and the personality of the brand into it. Write in the first person and don’t be over formal – although don’t be flippant either.
Break up your copy with pull out quotes, bullet points and images, anything to make it easier and interesting to read.
On the subject of images, depending on the category you are planning to enter, you should already be thinking about and collecting images to use in your entry. If you are looking to enter Salon Team of the Year in the British Hairdressing Business Awards, for example, make sure you are collating images of all the events you hold to inspire your team – charity days, fun days out, client evenings, anything that will show what a great, motivated team you have.
You’ll also need to back up many of your entries with financial data, so make sure you have this in a format that can be transferred to an entry – graphs often work better than columns of figures.
We’ll have more hints and tips for you as Award entry season approaches.