Imperial wins trio of awards for communications and marketing

The College receives recognition for its undergraduate prospectus, animal research communications and website.

Staff from Communications and Public Affairs, Student Recruitment and ICT collected three HEIST awards at a ceremony in Manchester last week to recognise best practice in communications and marketing in higher education.

The redesigned undergraduate prospectus earned Imperial a gold award, and there was also a gold for the College’s communications campaign about animal research. Imperial’s new website gained a silver award.

In the best undergraduate prospectus category, Imperial was among 16 institutions shortlisted and beat Middlesex University and the University of Huddersfield into second and third places.

Judges said Imperial’s was ‘a smart, confident and digestible prospectus with understated design’. They added that ‘it tells a story and is a good read’. 

Amanda Cerny, Head of Student Recruitment Marketing; Caz Ulley, Student Marketing and Comms Officer; and Abby Lloyd Pack, Senior Graphic Designer accept the Gold award for undergraduate prospectus

The team behind the prospectus were following up their 2014 Heist gold award for Imperial’s postgraduate prospectus.  Amanda Cerny, Head of Student Recruitment Marketing said: “We are delighted to win the gold award for the undergraduate prospectus against some stiff competition. Caz Ulley from Student Recruitment and Outreach and Abby Lloyd Pack from Communications and Public Affairs have excelled in improving the information we provide to prospective students in an engaging and visual way. It is great for our collaborative efforts to be recognised two years running as the gold standard of the sector.”

The College took the top award for best communications or PR campaign for a series of initiatives to increase openness about animal research, following allegations made against Imperial by an animal rights organisation. The campaign included internal communications, public events, a new website, a film and an annual report.

Judges commented that this was ‘a brave campaign, the results of which should be beneficial for both medical research and animal welfare’.

Kerry Noble, News Editor (second left) and Tom Miller, Director of Communications and Public Affairs (second right) collect the award for best PR or comms campaign from BBC Radio Two's Jeremy Vine (far right)

"Communicating responsibly about animal research requires the trust and sensitive support of colleagues from across College - in academia and administration," said Natasha Martineau, Head of Research Communications. "This award recognises the collaborative network that has made it possible for us to engage with public audiences about this important work, and we are honoured to be recognised in this way."

Imperial’s redesigned website, launched in December 2014, was recognised with a silver award.

The College primary website contains over 60,000 pages and engages a web editor community of over 1,000. In 2014 it received 81.5 million visits from 14 million individual visitors.

Manjuka Tennakoon, Product and Technical Domain Manager; Saul Batzofin, Infrastructure Programme Manager; Tess O'Neill, Digital and Creative Media Manager; and Pamela Agar, Head of Digital and Creative Media accept the silver website award

Pamela Agar, Head of Digital and Creative Media said: “We’re delighted that the College website redesign was recognised at the HEIST Awards and to hear that the judges acknowledge the team’s commitment to strong user experience and accessibility, confident design and quality of content throughout the site.

“It’s very timely recognition for an ongoing two year collaborative project across the College, involving staff from Communications and Public Affairs, ICT, the Faculty web teams and the entire Imperial web editor community, alongside our external partners Domain7 and TerminalFour."