We are very proud to announce that five Grayling UK offices have been shortlisted for a total of eight CIPR PRide Awards.

Grayling Bristol and Grayling Southampton have been shortlisted in six categories.

Outstanding Young Communicator: Megan Vernon-Dacey

Megan is an Account Director at Grayling Bristol. She has worked across a range of consumer and digital campaigns, giving her a strong knowledge of local and national markets. She has experience in consumer media relations, event management, digital and social media strategy and engaging targeted audiences at a grass-roots level.

Best Use of Media Relations Campaign: M&S

Grayling Bristol and Southampton was tasked with launching M&S’s new sustainability plan regionally and communicating two key commitments – M&S colleagues’ completion of 1 million volunteering hours and their pledge to support 1,000 communities by 2025. Grayling’s media relations and influencer campaign resulted in 235 pieces of coverage, delivering the highest media reach ever recorded by M&S for a regional PR campaign.

Arts, Culture or Sport Campaign: Arcadia

Grayling Bristol supported Arcadia’s first ever festival in London, which featured the monstrous fire-breathing Spider, most famous as a centrepiece of the Glastonbury festival, at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in May. The team built a compelling narrative, telling the story behind the 50-tonne recycled structure, to set Arcadia apart from other competing music festivals. This resulted in over 200 media hits, including Sky News, Mail Online, Guardian, Telegraph, Huffington Post, The Times, Evening Standard, Metro and ITV London.

Corporate and Business Communications Campaign (Southern Regions): HSBC

Grayling Bristol and Southampton’s HSBC campaign was designed to highlight HSBC’s commitment to supporting UK business. Our work provided a narrative of their customers’ successes. The campaign reached a significant regional business audience and has delivered sizable commercial benefits to the bank.

Not-For-Profit Campaign: Trauma Response Network

Sean Gardner, a survivor of the Manchester terror attack and the chairman of Trauma Response Network (TRN), appointed Grayling Birmingham on a pro-bono basis to launch a unique service to deliver free emergency psychological support to victims of mass trauma events.

Our work hit the national headlines, culminating in a total of 17 pieces of coverage secured across multiple media platforms, including interviews with BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio 5 Live, The Times and Sky News.

In addition, a thought leadership piece from Charlotte Gardner, Sean’s daughter, was successfully pitched and included in Cosmopolitan, highlighting the effects of PTSD and written to provide a dialogue with young people who may be experiencing similar challenges.

The campaign generated considerable awareness and encouraged an additional 87 EMDR psychotherapists to apply to join TRN.

Community Relations Campaign: Oil and Pipelines Agency

Grayling Southampton was appointed by the OPA to manage community and stakeholder engagement during the construction phase of their multimillion pound upgrade programme at their Gosport facility. Following extensive messaging, political and community mapping exercises, the team executed their engagement plan, which included political engagement, a public information event, direct community engagement, communication with local community groups and media relations.

Consumer Relations Campaign: Launching Aston Villa’s kit

Grayling Birmingham was charged with handling the communications surrounding the launch of the innovative tripartite kit sponsorship deal between Aston Villa Football Club, Fanatics and Luke 1977. Co-ordinating the three brands, as well as the two external agencies employed by LUKE 1977 and Fanatics, they developed an extended content delivery strategy, which communicated with all target audiences across the brands, as well as clearly demonstrated to fans the lineage of the brands and the commercial impact of the deal.

Corporate and Business Communications Campaign (Northern Regions): HSBC

To generate new leads for HSBC, Grayling Leeds and Grayling Edinburgh’s objective was to create advocacy by demonstrating the contribution HSBC customers made to Scotland, North of England and Northern Ireland economies. The campaign highlighted their growth, success and job creation by focusing on HSBC’s customers. To match HSBC’s relationship-led approach, they focused on local business media and social media influencers to engage business communities.

The winners of the CIPR Pride Awards will be announced between October and December 2018 at ceremonies taking place around the country.