It was a celebration of excellence when 30 countries from different continents won awards at the 2018 Golden World Awards (GWA) of the International Public Relations Association (IPRA) in Barcelona, Spain.

Leading the multiple award winners at the event was the Republic of Russia which carted away 12 trophies.

Others were Japan 11 awards; Turkey (10); the United Kingdom (6); The Netherlands (4) and Germany and South Africa received three awards each.

Countries that received dual awards for the successful public relations campaigns from in-house and PR Agencies were Nigeria, Greece, Indonesia, Spain, Argentina, Philippines, United Arab Emirates, China and Austria.

The single-award recipients were South Korea, Latvia, Australia, USA, India, Taiwan, Hungary, Ghana, Israel, Romania, Singapore, Italy, and Peru.

In the ranking of multiple award winners among the PR agencies, Dentsu PR of Japan led with 10 awards in different categories followed by FleishmanHillard with Headquarters in the United States of America which won 6 awards for PR campaigns in Russia while Hill+Knowlton Strategies of United Kingdom received 3 awards for its campaign in Britain and Netherland.

The dual recipients, who received two Golden World Awards at the event were Image Merchants Promotion Limited of Nigeria, Creation PR of Britain, Turkcell of Turkey, Hollander en Van der Mey of Netherland, V+O Communication of Greece and QC Partners of Germany and Weber Shanwick for its projects in India and Taiwan.

The single recipients were Burson-Marsteller of South-Africa, Orange 360 of Peru, Graffiti PR of Romania, Global Media Alliance of Ghana, PR One of South Korea, Navos – Public Dialogue Consultants of Germany, Djembe Communications of UAE, Fuentes Publicity Network of Philippines; Marco de Comunicación and LLORENTE & CUENCA of Spain, Ruder Finn PR of China; Excel Communication & Perception Management, DeVries Global and Lobby PR of Turkey, Stein IAS of United Kingdom.

About 30% of the awards came from inhouse PR campaigns by organisations mostly in Turkey, Germany, Indonesia, Austria, Argentina and Israel.

Speaking on the 2018 GWA awards, the President of IPRA, Bart de Vries said the PR professional body utilises the help of a wide group of judges from around the world to do the preliminary online judging.

Vries said: “In the spring, after the entries’ deadline close, each GWA judge is allocated several categories to evaluate online and thus help establish a short-list per category. Next, a group of 20-25 judges convened in person to pore over the shortlists during a single intensive workday.

“For the 2018 GWAs, the judges came together in Brussels in early July from 22 countries for selecting the very best public relations campaigns from around the globe by maintaining a transparent quality standard across the board. Therefore, the annual IPRA Golden World Award initiative, established in 1990, remains the highest peak of international standard for recognising excellence in public relations practice worldwide in a variety of categories. (PRNigeria)

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