Silver CIPR PRide Award for Leader PR team

Dynamic creative PR consultancy Leader Communications has been awarded a CIPR Midlands Silver PRide Award for Consumer Relations.

The annual CIPR Midlands Awards ceremony, held on Friday 20th November 2009 at a packed ICC, celebrated the best PR talent in the region.

Among the most hotly contested awards was the prestigious PRide Award for Consumer Relations. Leader won the Silver award having battled it out against four other West Midlands agencies, short-listed from entries right across the region.

The Team caught the attention of the CIPR judges with their PR campaign to launch Magazine Week (29 September to 5 October 2008) which took the national and regional media by storm.

Working on behalf of Periodical Publishers Association (PPA), Leader got the nation talking about ‘The Great Cover Debate’ - a campaign to find the UK’s best-ever magazine cover.

Around 11,000 people voted for their favourite cover, which was won by the iconic Radio Times “Vote Dalek” front cover from May 2005, which marked the return of the Daleks to Dr Who in the same week as the General Election.

The judges recognised Leader’s ability to mastermind an inspired media relations campaign which secured coverage across the national media including BBC Breakfast, GMTV, Sky News, The Times, Metro, the Guardian and Telegraph online, and countless features in magazines and newspapers across the country.

Gerry Vincent, director designate at Leader said: ‘I’m very proud of what we have achieved. The team worked extremely hard throughout the campaign and it’s great to see our hard work paid off. It’s fantastic to be recognised by our peers as leading in the field of consumer relations – but as we all know it’s the clients who really let you know if you’re a winner!’

Nicola Rowe, circulation director of PPA added: ‘We were delighted with the campaign. It reached millions of people and helped to raise the profile of magazines across the UK. Winning the CIPR Silver PRide Award is the icing on the cake for a well-choreographed and well-executed campaign which achieved far beyond the original brief.’