The Montgomery County Community College Office of Marketing and Communications(MARCOM) was nationally recognized recently for the work it performed on several unique campaigns in 2020.

MARCOM earned a gold Medallion Award from the National Council for Marketing and Public Relations (NCMPR) for the “Carvertise: Painting the Town Montco” campaign. The project involved wrapping cars with an advertisement for the College that included the tagline “Put Your Ambition in Drive” next to an image of a student studying at a desk on the front driver’s-side door.

MARCOM also won three 2020 Collegiate Advertising Awards. It received a gold award for the campaign “COVID-19 Pivot: Expect Stability at Community College,” which described the multi-channel approach to marketing the College during the pandemic. It won a gold award for the monthly President’s Report e-newsletter, which documents the news from the College. Additionally, for the gray tie-dye Monty T-shirt, the College received a bronze award.

Lastly, MARCOM received a bronze award from the College and University Public Relations and Associated Professionals (CUPRAP) during its 2021 CUPRAP CUPPIE Awards. The team won in the electronic media category for the President’s Report.

“The Marketing and Communications team is incredibly proud and grateful to receive each of these prestigious awards,” said Holly Ann Clayton, Executive Director of Marketing and Communications. “It is a testament to the Montco Family that each of these campaigns was able to come together to spotlight the invaluable work being done to support our students and the greater community as a whole.”

“Our team looks forward to new initiatives being implemented over the coming weeks,” said Clayton, “and appreciates the recognition from NCMPR, CUPRAP, and Collegiate Advertising Awards for the work we did over the past year.” 

The NCMPR Medallion Awards recognize outstanding achievement in design and communication at community and technical colleges in each of NCMPR's seven districts. The regional competition is exclusive to marketing and public relations professionals at two-year colleges. District 1 includes: Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Quebec, and United Kingdom.

The Collegiate Advertising Awards program is an elite national program created to honor today’s most talented marketing professionals for outstanding excellence in all forms of advertising, marketing and promotion specific to higher education products and services. The Collegiate Advertising Awards allows your marketing and advertising efforts to compete against similarly sized colleges, universities and other educational organizations from across the nation.  A wide range of categories cover virtually all possible entries from branding, social media, recruiting and fund-raising to multi-media campaigns, educational fairs, blogs and much more.

All entries are centralized for judging (per category) by a panel of design and education marketing professionals with decades of combined experience. Entries are judged on: Creativity, Layout/Design, Typography, Production, Quality & Overall Effectiveness. The top scoring entries are then honored with the appropriate award depending on final judges scores.

Judge’s Choice awards are presented to division winners receiving a perfect score from the judges. Beautiful, Gold, Silver, and Bronze certificates are issued by both Group and Category accordingly.

Since 2005, CUPRAP has been awarding CUPPIE Awards for creative excellence in marketing and communications to the work of member institutions in the categories of advertising, electronic media, print, public relations and marketing, writing and photography.  The competition is open from October to December to members only and awards are presented during the annual spring professional development conference. The competition is judged by industry professionals who have no vested interest in the institutions nor the work submitted.