Oro Valley wins two national awards for communications and marketing
Published on September 24, 2024
ORO VALLEY, Ariz. (Sept. 24, 2024) – The Town of Oro Valley’s Communications & Marketing Division has been nationally recognized for excellence in local government communications, receiving two awards from the City-County Communications & Marketing Association (3CMA). The 3CMA Savvy Awards program is a competitive awards process that recognizes outstanding achievements in local government communications, public-sector marketing, and community relations. This year’s competition drew more than 1,100 submissions from across the country.
The winning entries were announced at the 3CMA National Conference on September 5, 2024, in Arlington, Texas. The Town of Oro Valley received the following honors:
“We’re thrilled to once again be recognized on this national stage for our efforts,” said Misti Nowak, Town of Oro Valley Communications & Marketing Administrator. “Both the Shred Event Star Wars spoof video and the ‘This Is Oro Valley’ podcast were developed to better inform and engage our community in unique and interesting ways. And while these are just a couple examples of the exceptional work being produced by this talented team, I’d like to recognize Nick Going, who led the development and production of these award-winning projects.”
About the projects
The Shred Event Star Wars spoof video, which received the Silver Circle Award, was a lighthearted and humorous take on promoting the Town’s upcoming shred event. Inspired by "Star Wars Day" on May 4th, the video featured Town staff parodying the iconic franchise to raise awareness about fraud prevention. The effort proved successful, significantly increasing both community engagement online and participation in the event. The video outperformed historic social media content, reaching nearly 20% of the Town’s Facebook audience, and the event saw a 45% increase in documents shredded compared to the previous year.
The “This Is Oro Valley” podcast, which received the Award of Excellence, provides residents with timely updates on the Town’s services, events, initiatives and partnerships. Since its launch in 2022, the podcast has grown steadily in popularity, with improvements to scheduling, content variety and partnerships leading to 15% growth in total downloads across all podcasts. Additionally, there has been a 123% increase in downloads of the new segment, “What’s Happening in Parks and Recreation” in its first eight months of production.
Both the Shred Event Star Wars spoof video (top, left) and the “This Is Oro Valley” podcast were developed to better inform and engage the community in unique and interesting ways.
The Town of Oro Valley Communications & Marketing Division has been nationally recognized for excellence in local government communications, receiving two awards from the City-County Communications & Marketing Association (3CMA).