The annual Edward L. Bernays Mark of Excellence Awards never fails to be a fun night of visiting with our colleagues in public relations and spending quality time as a team outside the office. It’s a time for us to come together and celebrate not only the accomplishments and hard work of our team, but also the innovation of our industry.

This year, Nuffer, Smith, Tucker was honored to take home two bronze awards, recognizing public relations tactics:

• Bronze Award of Merit, Creative Tactics – For our work putting together an outreach event and media opportunity with Bakersfield College to educate future farmers and the community about a threat to the citrus industry on behalf of the Citrus Pest Disease Prevention Program.
• Bronze Award of Merit, Blogger Campaigns – For our work on behalf of WD-40 Co. conducting national influencer outreach to generate authentic, searchable content that drives awareness of the WD-40 brand and specific products to help drive sales.

NST also brought home three silver awards, recognizing complete public relations programs:

• Silver Award of Merit, Public Service – For our elected official engagement program on behalf of the Citrus Pest Disease Prevention Program.
• Silver Award of Merit, Community Relations (Government) – For our community outreach conducted with the Port of San Diego to maximize points of contact with targeted audiences and to encourage engagement with the Port Master Plan Update process.
• Silver Award of Merit, Marketing (Consumer Products) – For our work raising awareness of the new McDelivery program between McDonald’s and UberEATS to drive delivery orders and sales made through the UberEATS app, all without the support of national advertising.

We also had the unique opportunity to recognize NST’s leadership team for their unwavering dedication to the agency and our team during the unexpected passing of our president, Bill Trumpfheller, by nominating them for a special award. The junior staff came together earlier this year and determined that we wanted to share the gratitude and respect we have for the leadership team for selflessly putting aside their own grief to reassure staff and clients that NST’s role as a public relations powerhouse, and Bill’s legacy, would not waiver. Determined at the discretion of the PRSA SD/IC Board, Nola Trumpfheller, Teresa Siles, Mary Correia-Moreno, Price Adams and Derek Danziger received the first ever Director’s Award for our local chapter.

For many reasons, this year’s Bernays felt different. We took extra comfort and encouragement from the opportunity to spend a night celebrating each other’s accomplishments. We laughed a little bit louder at trying to squeeze all of us into the photo booth. We got to share our admiration for NST’s leadership team with an industry that has supported us in so many ways. And we got to come to work the next day and see the awards that are a testament to Bill’s continued legacy in the PR world. We continue to push ourselves and our clients to explore and redefine what PR means to strategic thinking, relationship building, storytelling and producing results. And again, we think Bill would be proud.