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Gold standard for our PR team

Our talented PR team has scooped Gold in the CIPR East Anglia PRide Awards for highlighting the major impact late payments have on British SMEs.

The campaign for Bacs Payment Schemes Limited (Bacs) was awarded the Gold PRide Award in the Corporate and Business Communications category.

We beat off the challenge of other award winning agencies and public sector PR teams from across Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk at last night’s (Nov 3) awards ceremony at Dunston Hall near Norwich.

The judges said our business-focused campaign had clear aims and objectives that were achieved in full. They were impressed with the strong media coverage, especially the 100% client hit rate, and wide audience reach. As well as more than 200 pieces of media coverage, including BBC Breakfast News, the campaign delivered an impressive cost per thousand ROI figure of 0.02p.

Managing Director Alison Meadows, said: “It is always satisfying to receive peer recognition for the great work we carry out for our clients. The figures really do speak for themselves with regards to the late payments campaign and it continues to reach a wider audience every year.”

Mike Hutchinson, head of marketing at Bacs, said: “The late payments campaign continues to surpass all expectations and is a great example of an agency and an in-house team working together to produce excellent results. It has allowed Bacs to build a credible reputation and authoritative platform in this area, while communicating important product messaging to both SMEs and large corporates.”

Bacs’ research shows that there are more than 750,000 companies affected by late payments with just under £25billion owed in total to businesses across Britain. With nearly 80% of SMEs still using cheques to pay bills, despite the potential withdrawal of cheque clearing facilities in 2018, Bacs is keen to encourage SMEs to consider automated payment methods instead.

The CIPR PRide Awards which recognise public relations success and achievement is the only awards scheme which showcases the best PR work being carried out across the UK and sets industry standards.