APRA Porter Novelli of Sofia, Bulgaria has won the Stevie Award for Best Communications or PR Campaign of the Year - Reputation/Brand Management in the public relations awards categories of The 2011 International Business Awards. Here we look at their award-winning campaign to fight the flab.

The devastating facts behind APRA Porter Novelli’s LIVE ACTIVELY! campaign were that each year more and more people in Bulgaria were suffering from obesity and related health problems, particularly children, the elderly, and young working people. Contributing factors included a sedentary lifestyle and a lack of education on balanced nutrition. Bulgaria had recently ranked fifth in Europe for having the most obese population, according to the EU’s Diogenes project.

LIVE ACTIVELY! Campaign Objectives

Nestlé Bulgaria is the country’s biggest Nutrition Health and Wellness (NHW) Company, with products targeted at people from all age groups and social and professional backgrounds. Nestlé is also a socially responsible company, dedicated to long-term investment in the health and well being of consumers.

Research showed that obesity-related problems strike everyone, even children. APRA Porter Novelli therefore created the LIVE ACTIVELY! campaign for its client Nestlé to address the mass public.

LIVE ACTIVELY! Events

Since 2005, APRA Porter Novelli and Nestlé Bulgaria have organized an annual campaign to raise public awareness of the benefits of an active lifestyle and to promote the importance of physical activity in an urban environment. A key element in the project is to promote walking as a simple way to not only stay fit and healthy, but also to improving the environment and reduce air pollution.

APRA Porter Novelli organizes LIVE ACTIVELY! events each year in open air spaces that include central streets, parks, and beaches.  LIVE ACTIVELY! 2010 integrated the following events into one campaign:

• Sofia, June 20: Official Opening Ceremony, a walkathon, sports activities, concerts, and educational games.

• Varna, August 10, Nessebar, August 12, and Primorsko, August 14: Beach sports activities, tournaments, and educational games.
  

Communications Campaign

APRA Porter Novelli supported the 2010 LIVE ACTIVELY! project with a huge communications campaign that included the distribution of thousands of branded hats and T-shirts, special LIVE ACTIVELY! footsteps stuck on the ground to mark the route of the Sofia walkathon; 120,000 leaflet insertions in newspapers and magazines; 60,000 posters; print ads; TV and radio spots, outdoor billboards; Internet banner ads; and a Facebook fan page.

In addition, APRA Porter Novelli arranged for the distribution in Sofia schools of 10,000 maps of South Park, with locations and details of related sport activities; and at the opening ceremony, 50 LIVE ACTIVELY! Gold Medals were awarded to top Bulgarian sportsmen.

VIP Support

LIVE ACTIVELY! received support from numerous Bulgarian VIPs, including the Bulgarian Prime Minister, Boyko Borissov; the Mayor of Sofia, Yordanka Fandakova; Olympic athletics champion Tereza Marinova; World rhythmic gymnastics champion Iliana Raeva; World Champion weightlifter Armen Nazarian; and Olympic shooting champion Maria Grozdeva.

Overwhelming Results

The amount of publicity and total media space devoted to LIVE ACTIVELY! events has doubled each year.  Over 300 media outlets covered the events in 2010. The number of participants has grown by over 1,500% over the past 5 years, with 28,500 people taking part in 2010. Over 83,000 people were involved in all the 2010 LIVE ACTIVELY! activities, including 18,000 Facebook fans; and the most active participants received a total of 30,000 sports awards.

LIVE ACTIVELY! is currently the biggest sports event in Bulgaria. It is Nestlé

Bulgaria’s flagship initiative for Nutrition Health and Wellness.

About Tomislav Tsolov and Lubomir Alamanov:

Tomislav Tsolov and Lubomir Alamanov founded APRA Porter Novelli in 1994.  Under their guidance, it has evolved into one of the most experienced communication groups on the Bulgarian market, setting trends for the whole Bulgarian market.

APRA Porter Novelli was among the founders of the Bulgarian Association of PR

Agencies, and Lubomir Alamanov was its first Chairman, from 2001 to 2008. During these years the foundation of the PR industry in Bulgaria was formed and the Stockholm Chapter of Ethics was adopted.

About APRA Porter Novelli:

APRA Porter Novelli is a full-service communications agency with a team of over 70 experienced staff.  For more information go to www.apraagency.com.

Yesterday in this space we recognized the more than 100 professionals worldwide who participated in preliminary judging of The 2011 International Business Awards, the world's only all-encompassing, fully-international business awards program.  The average scores of those preliminary judges determined the entries that were eligible to be included in final judging.

Today we recognize the members of the final judging committee for the PR awards categories of this year's IBAs.  Our sincere thanks go to

Mary Frances Fagan, Director of Corporate Communcations, Europe and the Pacific, AmericanAirlines®, Hounslow, Middlesex, United Kingdom
Clare Gayner, Head of Corporate Communications, HP Asia Pacific & Japan, Singapore
Richard Hedges, Director-Communications, Civil Aerospace, Rolls-Royce PLC, Derby, United Kingdom
Miriam Henn, Head of Communications-Germany, Sanofi-Aventis Deutschland GmbH, Frankfurt, Germany
Poonam Kaul, Director, Communications, Nokia India Private Limited, Gurgaon, India
Jin Montesano, VP, Corporate & Government Affairs, Asia Pacific Region, Kraft Foods, Singapore
Anita Sharma, Assistant Vice President, Honda Siel Cars India Ltd, New Delhi, India
Ranjana Smetacek, Director, Marketing & Corporate Communications, Fortis Healthcare (India) Limited, New Delhi, India
Josie Taylor, Corporate Communications & Analyst Relations, Microsoft Asia, Singapore

This outstanding judging panel was put together and led by Committee Chair Atul Ahluwalia, President - India, with Corporate Voice | Weber Shandwick, in New Delhi, India.

Their average scores determined the winners of Stevie Award trophies and Distinguished Honoree (honorable mention) medals in categories such as

• Public Relations Agency of the Year
• Communications Department of the Year
• Communications Team of the Year
• Communications Executive of the Year
• and 13 Communications or PR Campaign/Program of the Year categories

This year's winners were announced last week and will be honored at ceremonies in Abu Dhabi, UAE on 11 October.

What do you think of the PR awards categories judging committee?

Now that we're coming to the end of 2010 and we look back over the Stevie Award winners for the year, it's apparent that Weber Shandwick truly is the agency of the year for its haul of pr awards.

The agency won the Stevie for Public Relations Agency of the Year in The 8th annual American Business Awards back in June in New York.  You can read the full-text of their Stevie-winning nomination on the ABA web site.

Weber Shandwick Europe then won the International Stevie for Public Relations Agency of the Year in Europe in The 7th annual International Business Awards, which were presented in Istanbul, Turkey on September 27.  That award was accepted by Rose de la Pascua, Chair of Weber Shandwick Spain and Executive Vice President for Continental Europe.  Read the full-text of Weber Shandwick Europe's Stevie-winning entry on the IBA web site.

Members of the Weber Shandwick network around the world also won honors in Stevie Awards's public relations awards categories in 2010, including among others AC Sanafor in Finland, McCann PR in Romania, Corporate Weber Shandwick in India, and Weber Shandwick in Dallas, Texas among others.

In addition, the agency won a raft of other awards in 2010.

So who'll be the Stevies' agency of the year in 2011?

In 2010 we introduced a lot of new public relations and communications awards categories in The American Business Awards, and we haven't added any new ones for 2011.  But I thought I'd take a moment here to outline the categories that I think are the best fit for public relations, corporate communications, public affairs, and investor relations professionals, because not all of them are plainly labelled.

First off, there are those categories that are plainly labelled, and they include the many Communications or PR Campaign/Program of the Year categories we introduced in 2010.  Here are the main communications categories (the letter/nomination combinations are our internal category codes):

Read the rest of this article here...