Purple wins European Excellence Award for Outstanding Launch Campaign
Brand new innovative disability employment not-for-profit, Purple has beaten strong competition to collect Gold at the European Excellence Awards at a ceremony held in Berlin.
The organisation, which was formed in July 2016, won the Issues and Reputation Management category at the prestigious pan-European award ceremony against major global brands including IBM and Lidl.
Purple, along with its communications agency Acceleris, was credited for its integrated communications campaign to launch the business which aims to help more than 20,000 disabled people find work and enable thousands of businesses to achieve the Disability Confident accreditation.
Purple launched by opening trading at the London Stock Exchange in July with support from autistic actor and Holby city star Jules Robertson. As an autistic actor, Jules was well positioned to talk about the challenges facing disabled employees and how their talents should be embraced. The launch was supported by a survey which found that, even in 2016, almost half of employers were apprehensive about hiring a disabled person for fear they wouldn’t be able to do the job.
Judges praised the campaign for its creative approach of changing the conversation about disability and employment by having the conversation. For the launch, Acceleris delivered marketing collateral, video content, media relations, event management and website development. The launch was extremely successful generating widespread media coverage and several direct new business opportunities.
Mike Adams, Chief Executive of Purple, said:
“To win such a highly regarded international award for our ongoing communications campaign is testament to the quality of work we are producing across the whole team. We launched with the aim of getting more businesses to think seriously about helping disabled people use their skills in professional capacities and this award will hopefully go a long way to promoting that.”
The awards, now in their tenth year, celebrate the best in European-wide PR and communications campaigns and have attracted more than 12,000 entries since they began in 2006.
As part of its offering Purple will work with businesses and organisations to helping them become accredited as part of the Government’s Disability Confident scheme. For more information on Purple and the research findings go to www.wearepurple.org.uk