The Palm Beach County Library System was honored to take home two Bernays Awards at the Gold Coast PR Council’s annual ceremony in October.
The GCPRC, South Florida’s largest independent association of public relations, communications and marketing professionals, celebrated its 19th year of the Bernays Awards. GCPRC has given out these awards since 2005 honoring excellence in local public relations campaigns, marketing programs and media coverage.
The first award category was for Best Nonprofit Project or Campaign-Large. The library system won for the “Strategic Plan FY 2024-2028 & Action Plan FY 2024.”
The library’s “Strategic Plan FY 2024-2028 & Action Plan FY 2024” provides guidance for the delivery of services over the next five years. It outlines a vision of outstanding library service for residents of the Palm Beach County Library District and addresses community needs and emerging trends. It also serves as a guide for the library’s development as a cornerstone of a well-informed and educated community.
The second award was for Best Marketing Material (Video/Digital). The library won for “Embracing the New: The Complete Renovation of www.pbclibrary.org.” The previous library system web site had become outdated, and a streamlined site for both members and staff was needed.
Rebuilding a web site from the ground up with more than 100 pages typically can take up to a year or longer. The library’s communications department faced an aggressive timeline. Staff had a six-month window for completion of a new web site that displays the library as a community cornerstone. By dividing the workload, the small team of four not only built an attractive web site, but completed it a month ahead of schedule. The new site has bright, cohesive branding and more than 21 new tools to make it into a social hub, garnering a 446 percent increase in library web site users in January 2024.
“Winning not one, but two awards among many talented private and government sector agencies is a tremendous honor for the library. I couldn’t be prouder of our staff’s exceptional work on both the strategic plan and the web site,” Palm Beach County Library System Director Douglas Crane said.
