City Wins Three National Marketing Awards

Marketing & Communications - Oct. 23, 2009

The city of Winston-Salem received three national awards during the annual meeting this month of the City-County Communications & Marketing Association, the national professional organization for marketing departments of local government.

"Faces of the Homeless” and “This Place Matters” won 2009 Savvy (first-place) awards for public service announcements and best use of a promotional item, respectively. A recruiting brochure for the Fire Department won a 2009 Silver Circle (second place) award.

“Faces of the Homeless” is a 30-second PSA produced to raise public awareness and support for the Ten-Year Commission to End Chronic Homelessness. The spot combined stark black and white photographs with haunting choral music to challenge viewers to distinguish between those who were homeless and those who were not. The judges called it, “A different and exciting approach to educating the public about homelessness. … We got chills watching.”

“This Place Matters,” a photo-sharing campaign coordinated by the Historic Resources Commission to raise awareness of historic preservation, had a secondary goal of increasing the number of “fans” of the city’s Facebook page. Before the start of the campaign, on April 17, the city had 540 fans. Six days later, this number had more than tripled, to 1,700. By April 29 the city had 3,121 fans. The judges praised it as a “great use of a social marketing tool in a very creative way.”

The Fire Department recruiting brochure combines clear, concise copy and photos taken at actual fires in an eye-catching brochure deliberately proportioned to stand out from the crowd. The judges praised its “use of copy and layout. … You get a real sense of what it means to be part of the ‘team’ with this recruiting brochure!”

Watch the “Faces of the Homeless” [video].

Fire Department recruiting brochure [pdf/548kb/9p].

The city’s Facebook page is posted at http://www.facebook.com/cityofwinstonsalem.

Counting this year’s three awards, the city has received 20 national awards from the City-County Communications and Marketing Association over the past nine years.