We are over the moon to announce that we won a Gold Award for our community relations work with Harry Fairclough Construction around the build of Harrogate Borough Council’s new Civic HQ at last night’s Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) Yorkshire & Lincolnshire PRide Awards 2016.
This follows our Gold Award for Best Use of Digital at the event in 2014 (we took a year off entering in 2015 to give others a chance!!) and is a huge achievement for us, especially since we were up against such stiff competition from the mighty Yorkshire Water (whose in-house team usually wipes the floor at these awards every year) and a global agency who entered a campaign for a major household brand. It goes to show that, no matter what the subject matter or budget, we deliver tangible outcomes for clients on highly complex projects and we’re so pleased that this has been recognised by a chartered industry body.
Here we are receiving our award on-stage from children’s TV presenter of ‘Edd the Duck’ fame, Andy Crane:
Here’s what the client (Phil Harris, director at Harry Fairclough Construction Group) had to say: ““There is an ever increasing pressure on Local Government through its procurement activities to secure added value for and provide a superior service to its local communities. These objectives are passed onto us via our construction contract, which in this case, incorporates our obligations in relation to enhancing community benefits by way of economic opportunities, employment, training and constant communication. It is the quality of that communication that impacts upon our ability to maximise these benefits. The community relations campaign delivered by Engage Comms has more than met these challenges and we have so far not only delivered our contractual obligations but more importantly, been able to deliver on our inherent promises made to the people of Harrogate, particularly those living in the Knapping Mount community close to the site.”
We were particularly chuffed with the judges comments, which read: “This campaign took a dry subject and used a variety of innovative tactics to clearly engage the local community and deliver sustainable benefits for what could have been a difficult issue. The various levels of engagement covered every base and achieved impressive results. The use of partnering tactics was particularly strong in this campaign.”
You can read the full winning award entry here: https://www.cipr.co.uk/sites/default/files/Engage%20Comms.pdf
Of course, awards ceremonies aren’t all about work and no play. We enjoyed a great evening at the Queens Hotel in Leeds with the highlight being our front row seats for a performance by the amazing Bare Brass Band! Here’s a taster of how good they were:
We can’t wait to deliver more award winning work for our clients in 2017!
