Annual Reports

• Best Annual Report: Do you have a publication you write, edit, and package directly for your shareholders or stakeholders that you'd like to submit for recognition? We want to take a look.
• Best Employee Annual Report: Do you have a yearly report you write, edit, and package specifically for your employees? Are you engaging your employees, instead of just spewing facts and statistics? Do you have fun, out-of-the-ordinary design elements and creative stories? Share them with us.

Communications

• Best Blog: Does someone on your team write and maintain an excellent blog—one that is original, insightful, inspiring? We want to see it. It can be a company blog or an executive blog.
• Best Customer Relations Program: This can be traditional customer relations management or a customer program that features social media. Either way we’re looking for a program that passionately engages customers and turns them into action-taking advocates.  
• Best Facebook Page: Does your company's or client's Facebook page do more than just suggest that your audience "like" you? If you've answered "yes," we would like to see it.
• Best Mobile Application: We’re in the Mobile Revolution. Please show us your mobile application if you think it is fresh, user-friendly, and spectacular.
• Best Podcast: Does your organization have a regularly produced podcast? We want to listen in. Our judging criteria are as follows: clear, concise, relevant information. Bonus points for humor. Please include a link or clip of at least two podcast shows.
• Best Speech: A well-written speech is a very rare animal. Do you have a captivating, motivating speech that you wrote for an internal or external event? Please send it along.
• Best Use of Social Media: Was there an issue your company or client used to rally the community through social media? Maybe you facilitated a lengthy discussion about a current event, or asked members of the community to submit their own stories, pictures, captions, etc., on a topic? Show us how you are using social media to increase engagement.

Intranet

• Best Design: Is your intranet home page, for lack of a better term, beautiful? Then throw your hat into the ring. Please include a link to your intranet or multiple screen shots.
• Best Headlines and Blurbs: Does your or your client's intranet deliver captivating headlines, intriguing sub-headlines, and well-written blurbs? We want to see writing that makes your employees look forward to booting up their computers in the morning.
• Best Interview or Profile: The interview or profile should examine the contributions of your employee or executive to the company or the industry.
• Best Social Intranet: Do you have an intranet that brings employees together? This can be in the form of a traditional intranet, micro-blog, or other platform. Please include a link or multiple screen shots.
• Best Value to Employees: If your employees consistently use your intranet to communicate; submit content, suggestions, or feedback; or for other intranet functions, we want to see it—and the employee interaction it inspires. Please include a link or multiple screen shots.

Publications

• Best Employee Magazine (Electronic Publication): You have more space for words: How well does your publication resist the temptation to use that space? An electronic publication must say more in fewer words. We like simplicity and elegance in design. Show us your magazine. Please include a link or multiple screen shots.
• Best Employee Newsletter (Electronic Publication): This doesn’t necessarily have to be an email-style publication, but again, the keynote must be simplicity of design. Concision and punchiness rule here. We will be looking to see how much you get done in a limited space and time. Please include a link or multiple screen shots.
• Best HR Publication (Electronic Publication): What we’re looking for here is liveliness. Liveliness of writing, headlines, and subheads. We’re also looking for a shunning of HR jargon and technical language in favor of a publication that is crystal clear. Show us how you are engaging your employees. Please include links or multiple screen shots.
• Best Design (Electronic Publication): We're not pre-judging any format or any combination of colors or typefaces. It's all in what the design does. The ultimate test is this: Did we want to keep scrolling and clicking through the tabs? Please include a link or multiple screen shots.
• Best Redesign (Electronic Publication): The criteria here are simple: elegance and simplicity of design. That means a minimum of boxes, graphics, colors, and other distractions. It would be to your benefit to include statistics and page views, unique visitors, bounce rates, etc., to show that your new design did the job. We need to see the home pages and sample pages of both your new and old sites.
• Best Employee Magazine (Print Publication): You have more resources here. What do you do with them? You have more space for words: Does every word, every photo, every graphic make your company more efficient, more profitable, more sympathetic to employees’ ideas and initiatives? Then show us. Please send us a hard copy of your magazine.
• Best Employee Newsletter (Print Publication): We’ll be looking to see whether you integrate a strong personal connection and an equally strong work connection to employees in every article and in every profile. You do that through vivid, dramatic, fearless storytelling in every story or feature, no matter how short or long. Please send us a hard copy of your newsletter.
• Best HR Publication (Print Publication): HR newsletters and brochures have historically been the last thing that employees pay attention to in the daily flood of print publications, emails, and text messages. How do you get people to pay attention to your HR publications? Please send us hard copies of your submissions.
• Best Design (Print Publication): We're not pre-judging any format or any combination of colors or typefaces. It's all in what the design does. The ultimate test is: Did the reader leaf past the cover to take a peek inside? Please send us a hard copy of your publication.
• Best Redesign (Print Publication): It's simple: Just compare an old issue of your publication to one new issue. Feel free to point out specific improvements you've made that you'd like us to take a longer look at. Please send us hard copy samples of both your old and new publication.
• Best Article Series (Print or Electronic): Of course, a series must have at least two parts. Submit stories that came together perfectly. Have you written the story with a dramatic tension that leaves the reader wanting to read the next installment? We can’t wait to take a look.
• Best Cover Lines (Print or Electronic): If the front cover headlines of your publication provoke your readers to search for articles singled out on that cover, congratulations. What we’re looking for is the element of tantalizing mystery that compels the reader to open the publication once they have the cover line.
• Best Executive Letter (Print or Electronic): We’d love to see any general communication addressed to one or more stakeholder groups that shows unusual energy, eloquence, or insight.
• Best Feature Article (Print or Electronic): The feature can be about almost anything in your organization or in your client's organization. We're looking for articles with under 1,000 words.
• Best Interview Profile (Print or Electronic): The interview or profile should examine the contributions of your employee or executive to the company or the industry.
• Best Long Feature Article (Print or Electronic): The feature can be about almost anything in your organization or in your client's organization. We're looking for articles more than 1,000 words long.
• Best News Article (Print or Electronic): All we want is a great headline, an attention-grabbing subhead, and a magnificent lead that compels the reader to plunge into the story. After that the storytelling must be strong enough to sustain interest until the very end.
• Best Photography (Print or Electronic): Do your photographs add life and interest to your stories? If you're proud of the way your photos enhance stories, illustrate ideas, or make themes clearer, send them our way.

Video

• Best Interview Video: Did you present a visually interesting video that adds character to the interview? Submit your best to see if yours has the most character and visually stunning qualities. Please submit a YouTube link, video file, or disc with your video.
• Best Marketing Video: Humor, or at least wit, is important here. We want self-awareness that sells without being too obvious about its salesmanship. Do you have an intelligent presentation that sells effectively without high pressure? Send it to us. Please submit a YouTube link, video file, or send us a disc of your video.
• Best News Story Video: Did your team work an arresting, attention-getting visual angle into a news story with video? We'll judge entries in this category based on the overall quality of video, writing and sound bites. Please submit a YouTube link, video file, or disc of your video.