2020 Awards for Communications Excellence Winners Named

The Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives today announced winners of its Communications Excellence awards program.

ACCE’s Awards for Communications Excellence program, generously supported by Facebook, is designed to showcase top communications and marketing work of chambers of commerce and similar organizations. Several thousand award entries have been submitted since the launch of the competition, which is now in its thirty-sixth year. These entries highlight some of the freshest and most innovative marketing and communications work coming from ACCE member organizations of all types and sizes.

“Chambers of commerce are the storytellers and megaphones for their communities,” said ACCE President & CEO Sheree Anne Kelly. “Their innovative efforts to help drive engagement and change in the regions they serve are inspiring. Creative communications that spur action are what earned them this well-deserved recognition.”

A panel of judges — marketing and communications leaders from chambers of commerce in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia — evaluated 173 entries submitted for this year’s competition.

Entries were organized by category — based on the chamber’s annual revenue — and entry type: campaigns, digital media, event marketing and print and electronic publications. Judges presented 12 Awards of Excellence and three Best in Show awards. ACCE President & CEO Sheree Anne Kelly reveals the Best in Show winners in the video below.

Award of Excellence Winners

CATEGORY 1

Campaigns
Choose Joplin Marketing Campaign | Joplin Area Chamber Of Commerce 

To attract both talent and new industry to Joplin, Missouri, the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce (JACC) launched a #ChooseJoplin online ad campaign. Using the Choose Joplin website, related video assets, and a sophisticated inbound marketing funnel, they aimed to showcase their low cost of living, supportive community, and quality-of-life attributes to targeted, prospective businesses and individuals. The campaign reached 458,434 people, resulted in 1,132,422 video ad impressions, over 18,000 site visits, two business relocations/expansions, over 200 jobs created, and resulted in digital economy workers being recruited to their metro. 

Digital Media
Resilience@Work | The Chamber of Catawba County 

Our video, “Resilience@Work”, premiered at our Future of Catawba County Summit & Annual Shareholders & Investors Meeting. It is our celebration of the incredible leadership and resilience which has been displayed by our business community and our attempt to give our business and community leaders a glimpse of some of the stories we've witnessed during this unprecedented year.

Event Marketing
S.H.E. Week | Frederick County Chamber of Commerce 

The Frederick County Chamber of Commerce's Women in Business Committee’s mission is to empower and develop women through education, networking, mentoring and partnerships and to promote opportunities for all women throughout Frederick County. S.H.E. Week is an extension of this mission and centers around the concept of Strength, Heart and Equality (S.H.E.). S.H.E. Week occurs the last week of August and centers around Women’s Equality Day. In 2020, Women’s Equality Day also happened to be the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment and the “Year of the Woman” in the state of Maryland.

Print & Electronic Publications
Economic Outlook Guide | Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce 

Broome County Economic Outlook Guide directly advances the organizational mission by providing our membership with a detailed economic outlook for our area in addition to beneficial market research. This data helps our businesses make informed choices that will grow our local economy. We also conduct a Business Leaders Outlook Survey which is published in the booklet that helps other business leaders better understand how their peers feel about the current and future economic climate in our region, as well as for their industry. This is our fifth year conducting this survey and have begun to map out year over year trends from the data.

CATEGORY 2

Campaigns
Get. Gather. Go. Campaign | Ocala Metro Chamber & Economic Partnership 

The Ocala Metro Chamber & Economic Partnership (CEP) had one very critical goal—get as many local businesses, regardless of CEP partnership, to apply for a PPP loan as possible. The CEP team spent the weekend after the President signed the CARES Act planning our efforts to inform and encourage local businesses to pursue PPP loans. On the following Monday, the CEP kicked off the Get. Gather. Go. initiative. With this initiative, the CEP sought to GET businesses informed on the program; have them GATHER the necessary information; and GO apply. After the first round of funding, we determined that 1 in 8 Marion County businesses received a PPP loan. Local businesses far outpaced the state (1 in 25) and nation (1 in 19) in the number of loans funded. 

Digital Media
Wichita Falls Chamber Website | Wichita Falls Chamber of Commerce

We rebuilt our website in-house due to a need to combine our economic development and membership sites and an overall need to update the site. We included more virtual tools for economic development, an extensive job board, updated membership information as well as overall community news, programs and events. In 2020, we saw over 35,700 website visits compared to 15,000 in 2019.

Event Marketing
Citizen of the Year Celebration | Greater Manchester Chamber

The Citizen of the Year award recognizes an individual with outstanding leadership and citizenship in the community, while demonstrating exemplary vision, civic pride and commitment to the betterment of society. One of our major goals was to create as much noteworthy buzz about this event and our outstanding honoree in a virtual format as we would in a typical year. A variety of tools were used in marketing the event, that assisted with promotion, production, graphics and more.

Print & Electronic Publications
Forsyth County Chamber's Annual Report | Forsyth County Chamber of Commerce

The Forsyth County Chamber's Annual Report provides the organization's stakeholders with information on the work accomplished during 2020. Though different than the work that was planned for the year, this work (and thus the report document) aligns well with the chamber's aspirational brand, brand adoption words and mission statement. The annual report was an economical project for the chamber since the document was only produced electronically. 

CATEGORY 3

Campaigns
Rebuild Berks Campaign | Greater Reading Chamber Alliance

The Rebuild Berks initiative, organized and overseen by the Greater Reading Chamber Alliance (GRCA), focused on Berks County’s commitment to public health and safety as well as the commitment to restoring economic health to the area. Our organization led the charge on this multimedia branding campaign where all residents of Berks County and beyond with purchasing power were encouraged to buy from local businesses. GRCA asked the Berks County community to "Keep Business Local. Watch Berks Thrive." This campaign netted nearly 29 million impressions and reached more than 590,000 unique individuals.

Digital Media
Chattanooga Open Source | Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce

The Chattanooga Open Source website was created in response to interest our community received from several tech firms. We wanted to create a resource that would speak to their specific needs. We knew that, in many cases, we were speaking to coders. So we believed the classic video game inspired design would appeal to them. Likewise, we wanted to show slices of life in Chattanooga, that were relevant to their interests. So we produced a series of short, documentary style videos, that were featured on the site.

Event Marketing
31st Annual ATHENA Awards Celebration | Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Grand Rapids Chamber Annual ATHENA Awards Celebration was held virtually for the first time in its 31-year history. With average attendance exceeding 500 guests, the chamber translated an event known for its dynamic program and networking opportunities to a virtual format.

Print & Electronic Publications
DSM Forward Playbooks | Greater Des Moines Partnership

The DSM Forward Playbooks served as a catalyst for community-wide strategizing regarding best practices, next steps and industry standards for businesses adapting during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the end of 2020, the DSM Forward playbooks garnered 9,932 unique pageviews. There were 216 downloads of printable resources businesses could use for their operational efforts. This included things like signage reminding of health and safety guidelines, germ mitigation tips, 6' distance markers, etc. Several of these were available in both English and Spanish languages.