Last night we saw the Winners and Highly Commended entries for the 2020 Peterborough Regional PR & Media Awards announced!
Thank you to everyone that joined us, submitted a nomination to the categories, and to you all for your excellent work this year.
Here are this year’s winners and highly commended entries!
Communications Campaign of the Year
Highly commended
PECT – for their iiE Awards, moving their campaign to virtual and celebrating their awards in new ways. Their campaign included outreach work, social media and newsletters to accommodate this new digital focus, an integrated communications and PR campaign, a digital events brochure, and Google AdWords.
Winner
SPP Covid Response Group – for their work establishing a support hub for vulnerable Peterborough residents during the pandemic.
This required a comprehensive communications plan to be established, including newsletters, radio interviews, press releases and leaflets sent to all Peterborough households. As a result of their campaigns, they have been supported by over 90 local voluntary and community organisations, parish councils, faith communities and more. The hub has supported over 2,200 contacts to date.
Community contribution of the year
Highly commended
Susan Broccoli– for her excellent work with We Love Peterborough, providing key workers with essential items and us all with community news. In April, Susan ran a campaign to provide Peterborough City Hospital staff with things they were most in need of, which was hand cream due to the amount they were required to wash their hands. The campaign provided 138 donated tubes to staff.
Winner
Nene Park Trust – creating #ActivityOfTheDay downloadable resources and launched their #WheresTheRanger campaign for the first lockdown. Nene Park Trust wanted to ensure that everyone could enjoy nature and what the Park had to offer even when they were told to stay home.
Nene Park created a free downloadable resource for families to complete at home – totalling 71 activities – every weekday during the first lockdown. They also shared a social media campaign called #WheresTheRanger and launched a ‘virtual park’ sharing interesting facts about nature.
Innovator of the year
Highly commended
Jess Bacon – for her efforts to help graduates navigating life after university. Jess has a blog and has recently launched a podcast too. Growing by 27,000 followers on Instagram and becoming freelance, Jess has taken 2020 into her own hands and made a real success of it.
Winner
Peterborough Matters – launching their new community news platform in February 2020 which has provided excellent stories to us all regarding the pandemic and our wider communities. Peterborough Matters has worked to forge links with the community, even during the pandemic which has seen us all, physically, more apart than ever.
Internal comms campaign of the year
Highly commended
Inspire Education Group- this year, Peterborough Regional College and New College Stamford merged with the University Centre Peterborough to form the Inspire Education Group.
The group has led a sophisticated and effective internal comms campaign to ensure staff from all three education facilities are well informed and have been able to communicate during the consultation and set up phases.
Winner
North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust – as we all know, it has been a tremendously challenging year for NHS staff, and the comms team went above and beyond to ensure their staff on the frontline were just as supported as their patients.
One of the things they implemented was setting up a Facebook group for NHS staff within their Trust, with 3,000 signing up it far exceeding their expectations. This channel has allowed them to communicate with their staff in a timely manner and ensure any questions are answered by fellow staff.
Communications team of the Year
Highly commended
Nene Park Trust – they have done an excellent job at providing up-to-date, consistent messaging while the various restrictions have been changing. The team’s quarterly newsletter – Parklife – has gone from strength to strength and they have launched a new website too.
Their virtual activities and downloadable resources helped families get through the lockdown and their campaigns were received with glowing reviews and numbers.
Winner
South Cambridgeshire District Council – their internal and external comms has covered PR and media work, social media, website maintenance, internal updates across many Council departments and shared services. They ensured local people received their quarterly residents’ magazine during lockdown, while dealing with all digital requests from the Council.
The team has worked across allocating business grants, reaching the vulnerable, internal engagement with remote working, social media growth and planning for the future of the council and Greater Cambridge.
Communicator of the year
Highly commended
Eleanor Anderson and Shariqua Ahmed
Eleanoris a communications officer at North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust. Eleanor has flourished this year and grown in confidence amidst overwhelming pressure, getting involved with crisis comms and ensuring that patients in the Maternity Department felt informed and at ease about their appointments that they had to face alone. Eleanor has become a guru at Microsoft Teams and has organised fantastic events, such as live speakers for Black History Month.
Shariqua Ahmed is a reporter at Peterborough Matters and has done a brilliant job since she joined the team in March. English is not Shariqua’s first language and she has done incredibly well on both written, audio and visual work to ensure that the community are kept informed. Shariqua has a tremendous work ethic and is a respected member of the community who she regularly engages with to develop engaging stories. Shariqua has set up the country’s first Urdu podcast, speaking to older members of the South Asian community who are otherwise unable to engage with news sources.
Winner
Stephen Briggs –Stephen works tirelessly at the Peterborough Telegraph, including during the pandemic, which he was the only news journalist at the publication. During the year, Stephen has provided copy for 20+ articles every day and has learnt how to use social media and manage a range of platforms.
Stephen has approached a variety of challenges and changes this year with determination and has ensured that the Peterborough Telegraph continues to provide local people with news, Covid update and exclusive stories from the courts.
Despite being on his own, he has maintained strong, efficient communication with the community via news stories and it is a brilliant effort on his part to do so.
Well done to all of the winners, highly commended and everyone else for their brilliant work this year!