Collaboration Justly Receives Platinum Recognition!

As the Herald-Sun’s 52 weeks of full-page tributes to Durham comes to an end, it is only fitting that last night in blind, independent judging, it garnered the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau a “Platinum” Destination Marketing Award.

The campaign, which would have cost $240,000 was the idea of publisher Rick Bean to celebrate Durham distinct personality and character as distilled in the “overarching” brand, Durham-Where Great Things Happen! 

He predicated the idea on DCVB’s 300+ Great Things About Durham, an extremely popular document created 10 years ago for DCVB’s then 10th anniversary and regularly updated and freshened as both a flyer and a link that can be embedded on the website of any messenger, individual, business or organization site.

DCVB for its part, worked all year to freshen and expand what is now more like 500+ researching and creating the compilations and writing the copy for all 52 ads.  At the bottom of each page, Rick generously added the logos of two other Durham messengers, Downtown Durham Inc. and the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce which supported the idea as co-sponsors.

Kudos to Rick for an idea that perfectly demonstrated how an “overarching” community brand can dovetail with individual organizational brands and to the paper’s commitment overall to community.

And congratulation to the staff and management of DCVB, Durham’s official marketing agency and the facilitator of the the community’s extremely successful overarching brand distilled a few years ago to help make all Durham messengers more consistent and compelling way of articulating the community’s personality and values.

DCVB is also no stranger to recognition for best practices, initiatives and innovations.  This also brings to 12, the number of Platinum awards, more than 60 Destination Marketing Awards overall and more than 120 in the past 15 years.

Arguably more than any other DMO’s and definitely more than any other its size.

It really is no wonder Durham’s Destination Marketing Organization was not only the first in the State and some two dozen of more than 100 now to be fully accredited to the highest standards and best practices of community marketing and DCVB is still one of only two DMO’s to earn 11 exemplary citations in the process.