Southampton: Carswell Gould wins two industry awards

Creative marketing communications agency, Carswell Gould is celebrating after winning two major industry awards at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations’ (CIPR) PRide Awards.

The Southampton agency won the CIPR PRide Gold Award for Best Community Relations Campaign for its Love Don’t Hate campaign for Spectrum Centre and CIPR PRide Silver Award in the Best Event category for its work with Venturefest South’s innovation showcase #VFS19.

The Love Don’t Hate partner-led initiative is run by Spectrum Centre for Independent Living and was created to reduce hate crime and increase the understanding and reporting of this complex and difficult issue facing the UK.

Carswell Gould worked with the initiative’s partners and was commended for the time it took to understand the issues involved. The agency then took steps to simplify how someone can report being a victim of a hate crime anonymously by developing the new app. The second stage was to quickly and effectively raise awareness and promote the app and the growing, grassroots support network.

The campaign reached over a million people and the app is now being used by new partners, including Hampshire Police, to simplify and enhance their response to hate crime.

Carswell Gould’s work with Venturefest South’s innovation showcase #VFS19, which was held at the Ageas Bowl in March is now in its fourth year and was developed by the agency in partnership with the region’s leading universities, local authorities and key private sector businesses.

This year’s event achieved the highest levels of engagement to date, resulting in a 60% increase on the previous year’s attendance with over 1,000 delegates, plus a new event record of £90 million of investment opportunities for SMEs, innovators and entrepreneurs from across the South.

Ed Gould, creative director at Carswell Gould, said: “I’m so proud of the team at Carswell Gould. Awards like this are fantastic, as they show us that our peers verify that our work is of a consistently high standard. These two campaigns demonstrate the importance of being flexible, creative and incredibly passionate about getting the required result. Another thing that makes me personally very happy is that while our clients are spread throughout the UK and beyond, both these campaigns achieved high value and success for our own region - putting good things into the world is the ultimate goal.”

Carswell Gould is the media partner for the South Coast Tech Awards, staged by The Business Magazine.