The Town of Garner tied the City of Greenville for the most honors earned in the annual North Carolina City and County Communicators’ (NC3C) Excellence in Communications Awards.
Garner won six awards—two first-place honors and four for second place—in a competition that had a record-setting total of 248 entries this year. The awards were presented at NC3C’s annual conference in Durham earlier this month.
Garner won first place in the category of direct mail and print advertising for the 2019-20 Guide to Garner and in the category of government meetings broadcasts for the Garner Town Council meetings.
The Town won second-place recognition in the category of live or live-to-video broadcast for the Garner Christmas Parade; in the category of writing for the Amazon announcement news release; in the category of annual reports for the 2017-18 Garner Economic Development Annual Report; and in the category of digital external newsletters for the monthly Garner Update e-newsletter.
Garner’s six awards in 2019 come on the heels of the Town’s and Downtown Garner Association’s combined nine awards in the 2018, which were the most won by any jurisdiction in the state that year.
“Winning so many awards once again in such a broad variety of categories speaks to our commitment to excellence in all of our communications efforts,” Communications Manager Rick Mercier said. “Since we have only two staff members dedicated solely to communications, we have to effectively collaborate with others across all of our Town departments. We also have to draw on the talents of several Town staff members who are not full-time communicators. We do this so that we can provide outstanding communications services to our departments and, ultimately, to our community in a fiscally responsible manner.”
Judges for the NC3C Excellence in Communications Awards were communication professionals from the Texas Association of Municipal Information Officers and from a variety of communications industries across the state of North Carolina.
The purpose of NC3C is to encourage professional development and networking among local governmental communications professionals. The organization was formed in March 2007 and is made up of government professional communicators from around the state.
