CMA HOORAY!

We won! On our third attempt at bringing home the coveted Construction Marketing Award we collected it in true style at the biggest ceremony yet. In all honesty if we didn't win for our 'Shaping Your World' campaign then we never would have won!

Being awarded the 'Best Contractor Marketing Campaign' is testament to almost a year's worth of work. We have lived and breathed this for so long (with all of the various complexities) that now seeing how well received it has been, in the business and beyond, is amazing. I've already had over 100 likes and comments on my LinkedIn post announcing our win - and we're still only at the beginning of something we intend to keep growing. Delivering something of this scale required work from all disciplines - marketing, PR and internal communications so we can all be equally proud of this achievement.

The judges comments on the campaign were:

"A great project, focused on a really urgent challenge for the industry. Initial response looks very encouraging. Creative and innovative, a great campaign, well executed".

That's why we got to take home the trophy and giant foam hand...

As the six of us made our way up to London for the ceremony spirits were high. After finally settling on our outfits (I had a tough decision to make between black tie and black BOW tie - it's not easy being a man) we headed to the Radisson Blu in Portman Square.

Kerry Godliman

Comedian Kerry Godliman compered the evening where we were one of the only contractors in attendance. This didn't matter though - we were shortlisted in the 'Contractor' category after all! It can be a lot of work writing these awards submissions but the value of them cannot be underestimated. For one it's a celebration of the team's hard work in getting us there so it was up to us to enjoy it! It also helps spread the reach of our campaign further and, as I've already seen on LinkedIn, works as an impetus to get some genuine employee advocacy on social media.

Personally, I found the process of writing the submission was a lot of work but allowed me to distill down the main elements - thus helping me to concisely sell it in to clients and colleagues. Compiling all of the analytics meant I could also use these for reporting internally. With so many metrics the important part is focusing on which best prove success and teach us the lessons of how to enhance it yet further. 

Shaping Your World hits the big screen

Whilst I have continued to win personal awards (mainly for this blog!) I am very pleased to finally have one for the work delivered by the team. I feel that with this award I have now fully transitioned to the B2B private sector. At times this has been pretty challenging as getting to grips with a business this size is no mean feat! However, without excellent knowledge of the business no marketer can get anywhere close to succeeding. The changing nature of all business means that this is an never ending job but it definitely stops boredom setting in.

This also helps enthuse and excite about the scale of what is being done. By caring and admiring the work delivered it's a much easier job to sell it - and we are all salespeople whether we like it or not. 

There is no wind-down for Christmas for our team as we host our annual client drinks at the Imperial War Museum back in London tonight. Kier deliver all of the facilities management to the IWM so it's a very apt venue. My role has mainly been around the creative elements of the invitations and how we continue to promote 'Shaping Your World' to all audiences. With an award in my pocket and a giant foam hand this will be much easier than it would have been this time last week!