Public Relations Awards

Gravitas Communications is a strategic communications firms that operates at the nexus of public relations, Social Media and Search Engine Optimization. Founded in 2005 by Jocelyn Johnson, Gravitas won a Stevie Award for Communications or PR Campaign of the Year in the 2010 Stevie Awards for Women in Business.  This public relations award was accepted by Jocelyn Johnson at the ceremony in New York on November 12, 2010.  See her acceptance speech here.

Gravitas won their 2010 Stevie for their campaign entitled "Motor Trend 2010 Car of the Year: Good News for US Automaker."  As Gravitas reported in their winning nomination:

"There was a poignancy associated with the winner of the 2010 Car of the Year award – the Ford Fusion.  As the nation and the world worried whether Detroit could be saved, it seemed fitting that the oldest and strongest of the “Big Three” would emerge triumphant among the global field of contenders. Gravitas Communications was tasked with launching a campaign for the 2010 award that would reach new levels of coverage and serve as a positive and motivating boost to the American auto market – but with half the budget compared to prior years.  The goal was to appeal to a mass audience, with the widest possible national
and international media coverage.  The Gravitas team architected a comprehensive publicity plan that efficiently reached the broadest audience possible and was inclusive of all major communications channels including: print, television, radio, web, social media and online video. "

The results of the winning campaign (as of early October 2010) included:

- 1200 Tweets
- 175 Television hits
-  400 online articles
-  4187 streams on the Webcast - 6x more than we hoped for; currently 17,100 views on YouTube
- The Contender video has garnered more than 67,000 views on YouTube
- Live broadcast on FoxBiz
- Nationally syndicated Associated Press article; front page of FoxNews.com ,
CNBC.vom, MSNBC.com, CNN.com, USA Today.com, Yahoo.com
- MotorTrend.com broke a million page views overall, only the second time the site has achieved that level of traffic

The next opportunities to win PR awards in Stevie Awards programs?  The PR awards categories of The 9th annual American Business Awards, and the PR awards categories of The 8th annual International Business Awards.

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):

C01. Public Relations Agency of the Year

C02. Communications Department of the Year

C03. Communications Team of the Year

C04. Investor Relations Campaign/Program of the Year

C05. Communications or PR Campaign/Program of the Year
         a. Community Relations: campaigns/programs that aim to improve relations with communities in which the sponsoring organization has an interest, need or opportunity.
         b. Crisis Communications: campaigns/programs undertaken to deal with an unplanned event and requiring immediate response.
         c. Global Issues: campaigns/programs that demonstrate effective global communications implemented in at least two countries, one of which must be the United States.
         d. Issues Management: campaigns/programs undertaken to deal with issues that could extraordinarily affect ongoing business strategy.
         e. Low Budget (under $10,000): campaigns/programs that cost no more than $10,000 to plan and implement.
         f. Marketing – Business to Business: campaigns/programs designed to introduce new products or promote existing products or services to a business audience.
         g. Marketing – Consumer Products: campaigns/programs designed to introduce new products or promote existing products to a consumer audience.
         h. Marketing – Consumer Services: campaigns/programs designed to introduce new services or promote existing services to a consumer audience.
         i. Multicultural: campaigns/programs specifically targeted to a cultural group.
         j. Reputation/Brand Management: campaigns/programs designed to enhance, promote or improve the reputation of an organization with its publics or key elements of its publics.
         k. Public Affairs: campaigns/programs specifically designed to influence public policy and/or affect legislation, regulations, political activities or candidacies.
         l. Public Service: campaigns/programs that advance public understanding of societal issues, problems or concerns.
         m. Social Media Focused: campaigns/programs designed to be implemented primarily through online social media.       

C06. Communications, Investor Relations, or PR Executive of the Year

C07. Communications Professional of the Year (for non-executive communications, PR, and IR professionals).  This category has no entry fee.

These categories all require pretty much the same information:
a. An essay or case of up to 500 words about the achievements of the nominee since January 1 2010.  Depending on the category the nominee can be an entire department, a team, an individual, or the performance of a campaign or program.
b. A set of links to online work samples, news articles, press releases, videos, images, etc. that support the nomination.  This is optional but highly recommended.  You can provide as many links as you'd like, but up to 20 is optimal.
c. A brief biography of up to 100 words about the nominee or the leader of the nominated department, team, or campaign/program initiative.

As always we welcome your comments and questions about these categories and how to enter.

There are a number of other ABA categories that should be of interest to communications professionals, including many of the corporate literature and annual report awards categories, web site and blog awards categories, video awards categories, and live event awards categories.  I recommend that you take a look at these as well.