A helping hand can come from the most unlikely places. Image by Youssef Naddam. Unsplash licence.

In times of trouble, who might you expect to get help from? Friends, family, colleagues, or your close community all might offer to lend a hand. It’s not often that a complete stranger jumps in to help. Particularly one that’s disguised as an industry award with the title ‘Brainstrain’.

Meet your new friend — the Brainstrain Award

The People’s Choice Awards offer members of the public an opportunity to celebrate excellent communications and to draw attention to bad ones — through the Brainstrain Award.

Winning the Brainstrain Award is like being offered a helping hand from a stranger. We say ‘stranger’ because all nominations are anonymous (and free).

The ‘helping hand’ is an opportunity for the winner to turn their communication around and make it better than ever. (And maybe even enter the Turnaround Award in the next round of full Plain English Awards in 2020.)

The Brainstrain winner gets some plain English love

The winning nomination gets the unenviable title of ‘People’s Choice — Worst Brainstrain Communication’. Sure, the word ‘Brainstrain’ doesn’t sound that great. But when you read what else winners receive, the title becomes a little less ominous.

Our beloved Brainstrain winner receives not only the famous Brainstrain rubbish bin filled with sour worms, but also some very constructive feedback and training in the form of:

• feedback on their communication (and how it could be improved) from our expert panel of international judges
• the latest StyleWriter plain English editing software — single-user licence (from Editor Software)
• 2 hours free consultancy from Write Limited to start transforming the document or webpage into plain English
• a place on any of Write Limited’s 1-day open workshops to use before 31 March 2020.

Do your bit for improving New Zealand’s communication. Submit your nominations for this year’s Brainstrain Award