City Honored with Prestigious Marketing Awards
The City of Hampton, Virginia took top honors at the national City-County Communications and Marketing Association's (3CMA) Annual Conference. The City received a 3CMA Savvy award in the "Citizen Participation and Community Visioning" category for the "I Value Campaign", a citizen focused engagement campaign implemented during the last budget cycle.
The "I Value" campaign is an example of how Hampton continues to be a trend setter in creating cutting edge ways for citizens to engage their local government at all levels. When new City Manager Mary Bunting began the year with the torturous task of overcoming a $19 million shortfall in the projected 2010-11 budget year, she converted a monstrous problem into a new opportunity for reaching out to citizens.
The result not only forged one of the least controversial Hampton municipal budgets in recent memory, but created a dynamic civic-engagement initiative that can be applied to many more city issues for years to come. The initiative, called the "I Value" campaign, blended some of the best traditional citizen-outreach practices, such as holding old-fashioned, face-to-face community discussion through the city, with an array of Internet-based engagement tools, including live online chats and electronic polling.
Costing very little besides staff time to implement, the "I Value" campaign demonstrated to 3CMA judges just how an innovative and committed program to obtain public input could be successful. One judge commented, "Every community should 'steal' this idea." Another said, "A groundbreaking approach to building consensus, setting priorities and tackling a tough topic."
"I take great pride in knowing that others think we are models for other cities across the nation in the work we do for our residents. The external validation is great, but it is also no substitute for the impact we are collectively having in making our city a more livable community," commented Mary Bunting, City Manager.
In addition to this award, the city also won a "Silver Circle" award from 3CMA for "The Hampton 400 Oral History Project - 400 Years - 100 Stories." This amazing four DVD set, which was produced to commemorate the city's 400th Anniversary is still available for purchase at the Hampton History Museum Gift Shop, 757.727.6824.
Full details about the awards program and a complete list of winners are available on the 3CMA website at www.3cma.org.
About 3CMA
3CMA is the leading organization for local governments that are using innovative ways of communicating with their citizens by viewing them as customers with important input into the kinds of services offered and how they are provided. Savvy Awards competition recognizes outstanding local government achievements in communications, public-sector marketing and citizen-government relationships.
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