Last month I finished reading a stack of carefully shortlisted applications for Campaign's 40 Over 40, and haggled over the winners with a brilliant team of fellow Judges to find our chosen few.
Some were brilliant. Some were a masterclass in how to disappear in plain sight.
And the difference almost never came down to a person's career. These were accomplished people, every one of them. It came down to how they wrote about themselves.
The good news? The habits that made an entry sing are completely learnable. So before you apply next year (and I would recommend you do), here's what the best ones did.
The best ones sounded like themselves
The entries that landed were written in the first person. Plainly and proudly.
"I started in media." "I built a career that many assumed required a degree I never had." "Basically, I was too lazy to run the marathon, so I launched a beer brand." We loved that one.
We remembered those people. We could hear them.
Now, the fastest way to undo all that: write about yourself as "she" or "he."
"She is a highly respected leader." "He represents exactly what this award celebrates."
The second we read that, we knew one of two things had happened. Either your comms team wrote it, or a chatbot did. Neither tells us who you are. And personally, I cannot remember a single "she is passionate about driving impact."
So pick the first person, and whatever you do, please don't switch halfway. Half of these opened in the third person and slipped into "I" by the third answer. That whiplash is worse than just picking one.
The best ones wrote like humans, not algorithms
The applications we kept coming back to felt warm, specific, and a little bit imperfect. Written by a real person, in a real voice, with the odd joke and the odd sharp edge.
That's the whole game.
Because I think it’s important to be honest about what's going on, several of the applications (we felt) were written by AI and lightly seasoned by a human.
I think we all know the tics now. "Not just a leader, but a visionary." "Doesn't just manage a team—she builds them." The tidy triple: "collaboration, innovation and professional development." The em-dashes breeding like rabbits.
Use AI to organise your thinking. Fine. But hand the whole thing over and you get an entry that reads exactly like a large majority of others on our screens.
The tool that's meant to save you time, ironically, is what's making you invisible. So our advice for 2027 is simple: make your entry profoundly personal.
The best ones found their own angle
This was my favourite thing to see.
The strongest applicants had a point of view. One clear, quotable idea that the whole entry hung from.
"Creativity isn't decoration. It's impact." "The best leaders make themselves unnecessary." One leader wrote beautifully about the "invisible work" of communications, the wins that never make a campaign summary but hold everything together. Another reframed coming from a small European market not as a limitation, but as her advantage.
I'm still thinking about those lines. That's what a point of view does.
Now compare that to the wallpaper. Nearly every applicant told us they were leaning into AI, mentoring the next generation and championing diversity. All very good things. All very much worth doing. But when a stack of people claim the same differentiator, it stops being one.
The "advice to newcomers" answers were practically interchangeable. Stay curious. Embrace change. Relationships matter. If we can swap your answer with a stranger's and not notice… then that's not an answer. I'd argue that's just a placeholder.
Find the one thing only you can say. Then say it.
The best ones made their numbers real
One person didn't say they "drove digital transformation." They said they took a business from 95% TV-led to 60% digital-first across 75 markets. We could see the before and the after. And it made us smile.
Another turned a stamp launch into a global event: brilliantly, they sent stamps into space, had 68 countries of coverage, 25:1 ROI. We all ooo-ed and ahhh-ed about that, and I'll never forget it.
That's the bar.
"50+ awards" is not. "Projected 400% growth" is not. A loose percentage with no baseline tells me nothing except that you know where the percent sign lives.
And we would recommend you check your figures actually match. One entry quoted three different revenue numbers for the same business. The moment I spotted it, sadly I stopped believing all three.
The best ones told one unforgettable story
They didn't list everything they'd ever touched. They picked one thing and made us feel it.
Casting Javier Bardem in his first-ever commercial. Founding the UK's first running community for Black women before anyone called it a movement. A campaign that helped change UK family law. Specific, quintessentially their own.
A wall of achievements blurs into grey, whereas a vivid story sticks.
The best ones used the personal as fuel
The applicants who got this exactly right used their personal life as fuel, not filler.
One wrote about three years of IVF while founding her company—not as a sympathy line, but as proof of the resilience she brings to the work. I felt it. I rooted for her.
A gentler note here, because I mean this with love. Several women listed "balancing motherhood with a demanding career" as a key professional achievement. As a mum of two young kids, running my own business, I profoundly understand why. It is one.
But dropped into a box asking what you've done, it can actually quietly undersell everything else you've built. And that's a shame.
Same honesty, but with sharper framing. So my advice would be to only put the personal where it actually powers the professional.
The best ones let other people brag for them
The most persuasive endorsements came from someone with absolutely no reason in hell to flatter you. A client. A competitor. Someone telling us one specific thing you did for them.
Specifics persuade.
What doesn't? Your business partner or your line manager calling you "a force of nature." Save that precious space for a voice the judges can't second-guess.
So here's my provocation, and it's a hopeful one.
This is an award for people over 40. People with real, hard-won, genuinely remarkable careers behind them. The winning entries didn't have bigger careers than the rest. They just had the confidence to tell their story like themselves.
So write it like you. Own your story. You've more than earned it.
Cat How is Founder and ECD of How&How—a global branding agency based in London and Los Angeles. A former journalist turned graphic designer, she is a Global Ambassador for D&AD and lives in Santa Monica.
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