Fireworks leads Uganda's PR awards

Fireworks Advertising, the agency behind the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) whistleblower campaign beat 39 other competitors to the coveted award in the PR industry. The award goes to the best individual and institutional professionals in the PR industry in Uganda.

Fireworks, an affiliate of Arcay Burson-Marsteller in South Africa, scooped the best Crisis Communication Campaign Award. This award recognised the agency's strategies in helping NSSF to overcome the hurdles it encountered with the liberalisation of the Pensions sector.

Fireworks challenged Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) to the most valuable prize although the tax body won a record 4 awards at the gala dinner. Muhereza Kyamutetera, the PR Director at Fireworks Advertising said that emerging as the best says a lot about the company and quality of its work, but most importantly that it tells clients that working with the agency allows them to share part of its excellence.

"Clients should expect the best of us - as usual. Clients are the best at understanding where they want to go and we are experts at taking them there," Kyamutetera remarked. "A much closer partnership between us and our clients will yield us much faster results."

Other winners

Vicarious URA thumped other competitors to win the Best Event, Best Internal Communications, Best Corporate Publication and People's choice Awards. Other winners at the awards included; Scanad PR Uganda (Best PR Agency), AAR Health Services (Best Website), Uganda Red Cross (Best Media Management Campaign), Parliament of Uganda (Best Public Sector Campaign) and Eskom (Best Corporate Social Responsibility).

This year's edition of the awards saw players in the public sector enter more and better quality entries in the awards than their private sector rivals, according to John Mramba, chief judge of the awards.

Goretti Masadde, president of PRAU, remarked that the seriousness of public sectors players was a very big signal to firms in the private sector to wake up and up their game. In her opening remarks at the awards, Masadde noted that the third edition of the awards registered a 70% increase in entries (44) compared to the 27 that were submitted for the inaugural award in 2009.

"The trend points to an increasing appreciation of the awards and professionalism as a whole, a fact we greatly appreciate," she said.

This time, firms were commended for entering a reasonable number of entries in some categories that have been avoided in the past.