Aiken PR has won the highly coveted Gold Award for Best Sporting Campaign at the annual Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) Awards.
The top prize was awarded for the agency’s campaign for McDonald’s Irish FA ‘Ten Years of Teamwork’ programme, celebrating a decade of McDonald’s grassroots football in Northern Ireland.
As well as winning the Gold Award for Best Sporting Campaign, Aiken PR also took home the Silver Award for Low Budget Campaign following the campaign for McLean’s Bookmaker / Glentoran Football Club financial rescue package.
The agency was a finalist in six award categories on the night including Agency of the Year, Best Use of Media Relations and Corporate and Business Communications.
The Gold Award win came on the back of a hugely successful event for McDonald’s earlier in 2013, where the brand celebrated 10 years of grassroots sponsorship of the Irish FA by releasing a report by Loughborough University called ‘Ten Years of Teamwork.’
Aiken PR’s communications campaign centred on an event at Parliament Buildings, where Ministers and MLAs backed the results of the report into the growth of grassroots football in Northern Ireland. Speaking about the campaign, the judges outlined why they chose Aiken PR as Gold winners:
“This campaign succeeded in generating a great deal of positive coverage for ten years of McDonald's sponsorship of grassroots football in Northern Ireland. Using the hook of a Loughborough University report into the scheme, Aiken PR took a strategic approach, segmenting their key audiences - politicians, media and those involved in grassroots football - and creating a high profile event.
“Careful use of relevant third party endorsers and imaginative photography ensured the scheme generated favourable coverage across a range of media. Particularly impressive was the public affairs strand of the campaign, with a record number of Members attending the event, hosted at Stormont by the current Health Minister and including the incoming Minister too. This was a first class campaign.”
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