Roanoke Regional Partnership Wins 3 Summit Awards from PRSA Blue Ridge

The Roanoke Regional Partnership brought home three Summit Awards from PRSA Blue Ridge in November at The Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center. The awards represent the best public relations campaigns and tactics in the region.

The awards were for:

Publications (Multiple Pages): Experience Program, Gold Award

The Experience 2019 Program is the guide to the annual young professional’s conference. In the event’s first year managed by the Roanoke Regional Partnership, all elements and aspects of the event were designed to help encourage participation at the conference and at future events. A secondary goal was to elevate the status of the conference from a grassroots community effort to a professionally managed event. The booklet did just that with great comments during the event and in the post-event survey with participants noting that the publication “made Experience look legit.”

Public Relations Campaign: Ladies Love Go Cross, Gold Award

Equal payout in women’s sports is all over the news, but Go Cross goes one step further, guaranteeing equal payouts as well as equal media coverage and promotion. The Ladies Love Go Cross campaign used Google Trends data for keyword targeting, popularity of a hot topic, and combination of organic social media posts and Google Ads. The PR campaign helped generate registrations in the first year women had to pay to participate in the event.  

Special Events (Two Days or Shorter): Get2KnowNoke Pre-Race Lounge at Blue Ridge Marathon Expo, Silver Award

What’s the path to recruiting new people to move to your city or region? It likely starts with visitors who already have a connection to your location. Get2KnowNoke used this concept to create a cool space to highlight reasons to live, work, and play in the Roanoke Region to Blue Ridge Marathon participants, with a pre-race lounge at the packet pickup and expo before the race that drew 650 visitors in a matter of hours.

The campaigns were created and produced by Roanoke Regional Partnership staff members.

The Summit Awards recognize the best in public relations work in western Virginia. The Blue Ridge Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America is a professional association serving Central and Southwest Virginia public relations practitioners. Since 1992, the chapter strives to bring together professionals to enhance the practice, provide an exchange of experiences and ideals, and promote professional development.

The Roanoke Regional Partnership is a member of this professional organization.