Police comms chief recognised at CIPR awards

GREATER Manchester Police’s communications director Amanda Coleman was named ‘outstanding PR professional’ of the year by her industry peers last night.

Ms Coleman was singled out for being behind the “region’s highest profile PR campaigns and crisis handling over the past few years”.

In September she managed the force’s reaction to the killing of officers Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes. And two years ago she was praised for coming up with the idea to tweet every call received over a 24-hour period.

The annual Chartered Insitute of Public Relations (CIPR) North West PRide Awards attracted around 300 people to the Monastery in east Manchester for a black tie gala event hosted by former Smiths drummer Mike Joyce.

Emma Cameron of Havas PR won ‘outstanding young communicator’, while Hilary Berg picked up ‘best freelance practitioner’.

Consultancies and public relations teams picking up awards included Pelican PR which took home three gold awards and one silver; Stockport Council, which collected three golds including ‘outstanding in-house public relations team’; and Brazen PR which was named as the ‘outstanding public relations consultancy’ for the ninth time.

Bollington-based IAS b2b Marketing picked up the most gold awards on the night collecting four, including the award for ‘best event’ for its music festival IAStival.

Erin Portsmouth, chair of the CIPR North West Group, said: “Last night we celebrated some fantastic work carried out by talented individuals, teams and organisations from across the region.

“The standard of entries across the different award categories was extremely high this year and impressed the judges so congratulations to everyone that was shortlisted.”

View the full list of results on the CIPR website.