National Assessment Governing Board Honored With Communicator Awards

Board Earns International Acclaim for Distinction in Effective Marketing

WASHINGTON (May 20, 2013)—The National Assessment Governing Board’s communications work has been recognized for exceptional marketing effectiveness in an integrated campaign. The high-profile industry recognition, part of the 19th Annual Communicator Awards, salutes two of the Governing Board’s marketing efforts: one for its 2013 nominations campaign and the second for the strategic outreach campaign to release results from The Nation’s Report Card: Writing 2011, Grades 8 and 12.

This year’s Communicator Awards received thousands of entries from companies and agencies of all sizes. The awards are judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts, an invitation-only group consisting of top-tier professionals from acclaimed media, communications, advertising and creative and marketing firms.

The Governing Board won two Communicator Awards of Distinction, presented for projects that exceed industry standards in quality and achievement. The Governing Board’s communications efforts were judged on creativity and effectiveness in an integrated campaign, based purely on quality of craft.

The 2013 nominations campaign was a comprehensive effort to attract highly qualified people to fill positions on the 26-member National Assessment Governing Board. The campaign led to a 30 percent increase in submissions compared with 2012 and attracted the largest nominations pool in the Governing Board’s 25-year history, from 41 states—including states that have not submitted nominees in the past.

The second award was for the Governing Board’s unique strategic approach to publicizing the results of The Nation’s Report Card: Writing 2011, Grades 8 and 12, which showed how well students performed on an innovative large-scale writing assessment using interactive computer technology. To announce the findings of this first-of-its-kind National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report, the Governing Board developed a marketing campaign with messages and materials tailored to target stakeholder groups, promoted and hosted a webinar that attracted more than 250 education experts from across the country, and generated 476 media stories in print, broadcast and online media outlets.

“An important mission of the Governing Board is to make NAEP findings and data more accessible and meaningful to the public. We see these awards as encouragement for us to keep exploring innovative ways to broaden our outreach to key audiences,” said Cornelia Orr, executive director of the Governing Board.

Reingold, the Governing Board’s communications contractor, facilitated the winning campaigns and submitted them as entries for the awards competition. To be considered, communications efforts had to meet several criteria. Entries, limited to 1,000 words, were to detail the campaign’s effectiveness by outlining the project background, target audience, objectives, challenges, methods and strategies and results.

Other institutions winning an Award of Distinction in the marketing effectiveness category for an integrated campaign included The Home Depot, A&E Networks and Novartis.

The Communicator Awards is an annual competition honoring the best in advertising, corporate communications, public relations and identity work for print, video, interactive and audio. With more than 6,000 entries received from across the United States and around the world, the Communicator Awards is the largest and most competitive awards program honoring creative excellence for communications professionals. The Communicator Awards offer Awards of Excellence and Awards of Distinction within 10 disciplines and 40 subcategories. Learn more at www.communicatorawards.com.

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