Alberta Southwest Receives Five National Awards

Shawn Patience, AlbertaSW Board Chair;
Catherine Proulx, Managing Director, Twist Marketing;
Bev Thornton, Executive Director, AlbertaSW

Alberta SouthWest Economic Development received 5 Marketing Canada awards at the Economic Developers Association of Canada (EDAC) 44th Annual Conference, held on October 1, 2012. EDAC represents a national organization of economic development professionals from across Canada and the Marketing Canada Awards competition recognizes excellence in community marketing, which is an integral part of economic development.

Alberta Southwest was named the first place winner in each of three categories: best Advertising Campaign, best Website www.albertasouthwest.com, and best Online Community Outreach and Social Media for the www.myalbertasouthwest.com microsite.

The Alberta SouthWest Advertising Campaign then went on to be named as an EDAC Cup Contender and from those nominees was named EDCA Cup Winner. The EDAC Cup represents “best of the best”, and is the top recognition of the annual awards program, which attracted 160 submissions from across Canada. Submissions were evaluated based on creativity and uniqueness of the approach as well as effectiveness in achieving objectives.

Alberta SouthWest Regional Economic Development Alliance is a collaboration of 15 rural municipalities that has been working together for the last 10 years. Committed to, to helping each other succeed, recent initiatives included a re-design and launch of the regional website with a multi-media campaign and contest designed to engage the region in a planned strategy to create shared ownership of the site.

Fort Macleod Mayor Shawn Patience, Chair of the AlbertaSW Board, also acknowledged the commitment of the board and strong support from all levels of our member communities. “The future is indeed bright for this organization. The reality is this: we are all small communities...if we can make better use of the resources that we have and that are available, if we can partner with other communities to do things that we could not do on our own,. That means stronger communities and an exciting future for our entire region."

“This close collaboration has really increased our capacity to be effective,” said Bev Thornton, the AlbertaSW executive director. “And, a high level of volunteer support allows us to save the use of our limited resources for professional services to really bring our ideas together. We have had a wonderful partnership with Twist Marketing for over two years and their expertise has really made our plans and ideas sparkle.”

AlbertaSW has had a banner year, winning the 2012 Summit International Bronze Award in the Community Website category, and three 2012 Economic Developers of Alberta Awards of Excellence. AlbertaSW is also one of three finalists for the 2012 “Tourism Community of the Year” Alto Award. This is a new award category and the nine 2012 Alto Award winners will be announced on Monday, October 22, 2012 at the upcoming Travel Alberta Conference.


Related links:
www.albertasouthwest.com
www.myalbertasouthwest.com
www.edac.ca