Hey hey - for those running a customer awards program — do you let the finalists know if they did not win the award before the award winners are announced? 🏆
The two programs I support do not do this. We announce all winners/honorable mentions at the same time - this helps drive engagement from all nominees with the content and social campaign that announces the winners.
The past two companies I’ve worked for do let the winners know in advance. We typically created some type of content with nominated customers - like before the event to hype the program up and then created lots of content with the winners. We asked the nominees or finalists if they’d be interested in sharing their stories as well so it was helpful across the board in terms of content generation.
We typically play company B-roll and create videos with the winners so that takes time and planning and they have to be notified in advance to ensure time for feedback etc
Sarah makes an important point - the programs I support include storytelling as a requirement upon submitting to the program (in the terms and conditions). We don't need approval at the end of the awards because we gather it at the start. This also doesn't limit us from only telling stories from the winners and honorable mentions!
One program that I support lets all finalists know they have made the cut prior to publicly announcing the finalists (because we have to work with them to get messaging approved about how they use the product, a summary of the company, etc). The winner announcements are saved for an in-person event at the annual customer conference.
