Friday, 29 October 2010

Celebrating Success

By any measure (except perhaps efficient air conditioning) this week's PRCA Awards were a a roaring success, in a sold-out Park Lane Hilton.

In the 2007 awards -two weeks into my new role at the PRCA- we had a fifth of this week's attendees, and a third of the entries. And, in truth, the evening wasn't very good. In fact, it was so soul-crushingly bad that I seriously contemplating asking Colin Farrington for my old job back at the CIPR. Fortunately, I held my nerve, and decided that instead we'd work hard to improve the awards. And we certainly have.

This week's awards saw a fantastically well-run event, fronted by an hilarious Rufus Hound, showcasing the very best our industry has to offer from across the consultancy, in house and freelance sectors of PR. And attended by 250 people more than even last year's event. I've been to dozens of PR awards, and -biased though i obviously am- it was the most enjoyable I've been to. AS you can see from the photos After PR Week's extravaganza, it was also the biggest. That's a pretty decent achievement.

The only problem of course is this: How can we improve for next year? Well, it's a nice problem to have eh?!

Thursday, 21 October 2010

Congratulating Our First Qualification Recipient

Congratulations to Amy Bryant-Jeffries, the first person to be awarded a PRCA qualification.


Francis Ingham and Amy Bryant-Jeffries, with Stephen Pomeroy, CEO of Remarkable Group

I had the pleasure of presenting Amy with her Foundation Certificate earlier this week, at the Remarkable Group office in Winchester, where Amy has now been promoted to PR Account Executive.

We launched PRCA qualifications just a little while ago, and Amy's the first person to complete the course.

For those of you who haven't looked at our offering in any depth, this is what makes it stand out from the competition:

1. PRCA qualifications are about practical skills, not dull theory
2. They're priced at an incredibly competitive level -consciously below the prices offered by other professional bodies
3. They're modular, so you can start and finish at a pace that suits you
4. They're underpinned by a Qualifications Board of eminent practitioners -Jonathan Jordan, ex-Burson Marsteller, and now founder of Sermelo; Dick Fedorcio, Public Affairs Director at the Metropolitan Police and ex-President of the CIPR; Professor Trevor Morris; Westminster's A;ex Aiken; and Bray Leino's Penny Porter

So if you're looking to give your career or a boost, or to equip your staff with practical skills, why not follow Amy's lead?