AI Is Changing Awards. Just Not in the Way Most People Think.

I've been using AI almost every day for awards work.

And honestly...

I wouldn't want to go back.

It saves hours.

It helps me structure a case study.

It analyses results in seconds.

It helps identify categories I may have overlooked.

Tools like the Festival of Media's AI Entry Navigator or the Smarties Coach GPT are already doing some really interesting things, helping teams match campaigns to the right categories.

There's no question.

AI has become a valuable part of the process.

But the more I use it, the more convinced I become of something.

The hardest part of awards was never writing the entry.

The Hard Part Starts Much Earlier

People often imagine that awards are won because someone wrote a brilliant submission.

Sometimes that's true.

Most of the time, it isn't.

Most awards are won months before anyone opens an entry form.

They're won when someone notices a campaign that everyone else overlooked or when there is a system in place to identify great work.

When somebody asks for the results before they're forgotten.

When someone convinces a busy account team that it's worth spending another hour talking about a campaign they finished six months ago.

That's the real work.

And AI can't do any of it.

AI Can't Build Relationships

AI can organize information.

It can't create it.

It can't interview the strategist who remembers the insight that changed the campaign.

It can't challenge vague answers until something interesting appears.

It can't persuade a client to release a missing KPI.

It can't calm a stressed account director who's already thinking about the next brief.

And it definitely can't build the trust needed for dozens of people to collaborate on a single awards submission.

Awards have always been a people business.

They still are.

Judges Know the Difference

Another interesting thing has happened over the past year.

Judges are getting surprisingly good at spotting AI-written entries.

Not because the grammar is bad.

Quite the opposite.

They're often perfectly written.

They're just...

Flat.

The language is polished.

But the story feels generic.

The personality disappears.

AI is excellent at helping you write.

It still struggles to help you sound human.

What AI Has Actually Changed

If there's one thing AI has changed, it's this:

Writing is no longer the bottleneck.

Finding the right work is.

Building the internal systems that surface great campaigns is.

Getting teams to collaborate is.

Creating enough trust for people to share their best work is.

That's where agencies still win—or lose.

That's the Opportunity

The agencies getting the most from AI aren't replacing people.

They're removing repetitive work so people can spend more time doing the things only humans can do.

Listening.

Connecting ideas.

Asking better questions.

Building relationships.

Helping great work find its way into the room.

Because at the end of the day...

AI can help you write an awards entry.

It still can't tell you which campaign deserves one.