DOING THE REGION PROUD

Fresh has named a North East PR company as the Freshest Small PR Team for 2009 this week, at the inaugural award ceremony which celebrated success in the industry across the country.

Quay2 Media has brought the coveted national accolade home to North Shields, having beaten off stiff competition, including the two other shortlisted candidates based in Leeds and Manchester.

Held at the Deansgate Hilton Hotel in Manchester, the awards were attended by an array of leading communications professionals from all over the UK including representatives from industry bodies the CIPR and the PRCA. The awards, recognising excellence, evaluation and results in Public Relations and Communications were announced following a two stage judging process chaired by PR guru Mark Borkowski, who commented:

“Frankly, I was impressed with the awards entries; the ambition and ingenuity on display was invigorating. So many campaigns clearly demonstrated that PR outside M25 is vibrant, alive and well. The competition was of a lofty standard, so it was tricky to come up with a finite list of winners.”

Quay2 Media was set up by If we can, you can members Antonia Clifford and Christian Cerisola both of Whitley Bay, in September 2006 and has grown to a team of four, retaining clients of all sizes across the North East, Yorkshire, Buckinghamshire and London.

Based in North Shields, the pair, along with Kirsty Dunn and Kate Gibson, is focussed on delivering the best of PR, media relations and crisis management services to both existing and new clients as they grow the company.

The judge’s comments summed up why Quay2 led the way in the Small PR Team category:

“Quay2 Media are clearly a good team of people and it is the sort of place you would like to work. They have a healthy turnover and have demonstrated tight targets which they have continually beaten. Quay2 has also shown a good investment in people and this is clearly paying off as the majority of their clients come from referrals and they have an incredibly high rate of client retention.”

Having just won the Gold award in November for the CIPR’s Outstanding Small Consultancy and the Silver award for the Consumer Campaign for McInerney Homes, Christian and Antonia are determined to keep firmly focussed on the client base that is bring them such success. Christian said:

“It is a great accolade to win these awards and they are testament to the relationship we have with our clients. Without our strong portfolio of clients there would not be a business, so we are determined that we will keep our feet on the ground and keep doing exactly what we have done for the last couple of years – give outstanding, award winning service to everyone who employs our service.”

Further information about Quay2 including clients endorsements is available at http://www.quay2media.com/. Information on the fresh awards is available at http://www.freshawards.co.uk/