9 May 2008

What’s next? An Item win in CiB communication awards

Item is celebrating with client Sky after winning an industry award for a newspaper that shared the key messages of a senior management conference with all Sky employees.

‘What’s next news’ has secured an Award of Excellence in the ‘best news or event reporting’ category of the 2008 Communicators in Business (CiB) awards.

Two Item writers – Fiona Allison and Paul Jones – attended the ‘What’s next’ conference, held on a Thursday and Friday, writing up the events into the evenings to meet strict deadlines.

Paul then worked with a design team from News International at Wapping to ensure that the paper was completed by 6pm on the Saturday: it had to go to press within a very tight schedule as a well-known national newspaper was due to be printed on the presses immediately afterwards!

Meeting this deadline meant that ‘What’s next news’ could be delivered to more than 10,000 Sky employees by 9am on the following Monday.

The CiB judges described the publication as ‘VERY good’, saying: ‘It’s hard to find many ways in which it could be made much better.’

They added: ‘It appears to have been effortlessly written and designed, even though the team was up against a really tight deadline…overall the writing is extremely tight and professional.

‘On the whole, it’s an extremely thorough and admirable piece of work.’

Sky Internal Communications Manager Gill Fellows says:‘Sky people were surprised and delighted to receive extensive coverage of the conference on the very next working day!

‘This couldn’t have been achieved without the incredible professionalism of Item’s writing team working in tandem with both Sky Internal Comms and News International.

‘This has set an incredible benchmark for the future.’