It’s that time of the year again, awards season! Verdin has taken home top honors at this year’s PRSA Image Awards.
The Central California Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America held their annual Image Awards luncheon in Fresno on May 7 to recognize the best work from 2014 in the fields of marketing, communications, public relations and advertising. Verdin took home a total of nine awards, the most awarded to any agency that day!
Verdin won two of the highest honors given at the luncheon: Professional of the Year, given to President Mary Verdin; and Campaign of the Year, for the 24-Hour Give Campaign. Verdin also took home five Awards of Excellence and two Awards of Merit.
PR Professional of the Year
PRSA’s Public Relations Professional of the Year award honors the individual who represented the best in public relations in the previous year, and in 2014 it was Verdin’s own Mary Verdin. As our president and commander in chief, Mary is the perfect example of a PR practitioner who establishes mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the public. She is a strong leader and the driving force behind the creative and innovative strategies at Verdin.
Campaign of the Year
Verdin earned the Campaign of the Year Award for their 24-Hour Give Campaign, in which they did a total rebrand of local non-profit Op C.O.Y. in only 24 hours. The rebrand of Op C.O.Y., a residential camp that helps steer at-risk youth in the right direction using sports as a teaching tool, included a new name, logo, website, video, brochure and media spots, with a final value totaling over $80,000.
Awards of Excellence
The Awards of Excellence recognized our work with the following organizations:
SLO County Sheriff’s Office: Social Media and Public Service Announcements
Verdin worked with the SLO County Sheriff’s Office to implement the #preparedSLOcampaign using social media on Facebook and Twitter. Verdin additionally developed a series of PSAs to educate the community about what to do when disaster strikes.
Morro Bay Tourism Bureau: Visitor’s Guide
Verdin developed the 2014 Morro Bay Visitor’s Guide, the first in two years. The visitor’s guide showcased many attractions Morro Bay has to offer both visitors and locals alike and was chock-full of helpful information, tips and beautiful photography.
SLO Regional Rideshare: Website
With San Luis Obispo County increasing in popularity all the time, we teamed up with SLO Regional Rideshare to develop a website people could visit to find out everything they need to know about public transportation, carpools, traffic and more.
With so many different, fun things to do in San Luis Obispo it can be hard to pick just one. Verdin and the City of San Luis Obispo worked together to develop an app that would give people detailed descriptions about all the events happening in SLO, right in their back pocket!
Awards of Merit
The Awards of Merit recognized our work with the following organizations:
Jack’s Helping Hand: Newsletter
Jack’s Helping Hand, a local non-profit that gives assistance to children and their families dealing with a life altering illness or condition, has been a longtime client and friend of Verdin. We developed an annual newsletter that would help to inform Jack’s Helping Hand families and the community about all things going on with Jack’s.
UCSB Keep Isla Vista Safe: Community Service
After out-of-control partying at UCSB became a community issue, the college teamed up with Verdin to help mitigate partying with the Keep Isla Vista Safe campaign. The campaign aimed to discourage out-of-town college students from attending the Halloween festivities in Santa Barbara. The “Keep IV Safe” campaign was extremely successful, lowering attendance by more than half from the previous year.
“We pour so much passion into all of our projects with our clients, it’s nice to get recognition on their behalf,” Mary Verdin, President of Verdin says. “It is really such an honor to win Professional of the Year. I am so lucky to be doing what I love, which makes hard work fun and rewarding. Mostly we owe these awards to our client, who trust us to help them tell their brand’s stories.”
