SILVER CIPR PRide Award Winner 2004 for Best Low Budget campaign

Overview
LSC Essex wished to raise awareness of its Champion of Learning Awards, while conveying key messages about the benefits of lifelong learning to individuals, organisations, families and businesses. Mosaic Publicity's target was to increase the number of award nominations by 10 per cent, while encouraging the local media, including BBC Essex, to support the awards and cover our steady flow of news releases.

Plan & Strategy
Mosaic drew up a PR plan incorporating the following:

• asking celebrity Johnny Ball to launch the awards at four different Essex locations and host the awards night
• using human interest stories from the previous year’s winners/finalists
• inviting BBC Essex to broadcast the awards' night live, and to have their own People’s Choice category voted for by listeners
• inviting the editor of one of the county’s principal newspaper groups to be on the judging panel
• creating a schedule of press release opportunities to drip feed updates on the awards to the media right through to the end of the awards

Audiences
Public, business, FE and Adult Education colleges.

Results
Launch covered by all local media; this was followed by a letter from Johnny Ball to the editors of all the local papers saying how inspired he was by the awards and encouraging people to get involved. Then ongoing PR and features in local media and business magazines.

265 entries in the competition, 20 per cent up on the previous year. One of the Champions of Learning said the publicity was partially responsible for helping him to get his first job in teaching!