HOW TO PACKAGE A WINNING ANVIL @ OCTOBER 28, 2015

Last October 28, 2015, I attended the "HOW TO PACKAGE A WINNING ANVIL" seminar at the Unilab Bayanihan Center.

Original schedule was October 19 and 20, 2015!

But due to inclement weather, the seminar was moved to a later date, so much closer to the deadline!

However, I was personally interested in applying for the 51st Anvil Award, but was at a loss on how to present our PR Program for this to be appreciated by the jurors.

Questions in my mind, among others, were:

"What is Anvil looking for?"

"What do they mean by RESULTS?"

"How do we present the results?"

"How much supporting documents can we present?"
... and so many more questions in our minds!

I hoped this was the seminar to open my mind more to the intricacies of the Anvil Award!

There were several attendees, mostly from high level corporations such as Megaworld, Jollibee, Sun Life Financials.  I noticed many of them are young and belonged either to the Public Relations, Marketing or Communications department of their corporations. 

When asked who believed their programs would win, I saw a lot of show of hands! I admired their passion and the belief that their programs and tools would win... They indeed had the right attitude for this Anvil Award!

I felt a bit out of place (as if I would really feel out of place!) because 1) I was a doctor... and a medical director... and not in PR nor communications; 2) I did not belong to a listed corporation, although,we are proud of our organization, Ciudad Medical Zamboanga; 3) I was the only one from Mindanao... and, I wasn't sure if someone from the Visayas was among the audience!

When asked by Sir Jones T. Campos, "Who thinks they won't win?", I raised my hand, but only because I wanted to ask some questions.

And my first question was, "Can a smaller company and from Mindanao (Zamboanga City specifically) at that, compete with the huge corporations who have all the resources, the budget (in Millions!) and the communications arm or the support of great Public Relations companies, EVER WIN?

And the answer I was given was, YES! Deciding if you are worthy of the Anvil depends on the organization's own Objectives, Methods and Results of their programs and their documentation, as well as the significance and impact of the programs or tools.

Brilliant mentors, Mr. Jones T. Campos and Mr. Ron Jabal shared their pearls on how to package the "Winning Anvil" and "Excellence of Public Relations in the era of disruption!"

They also shared several examples of previous winners such as the "Tulong Na, Tabang na" of ABS-CBN, which won the Grand Anvil of the 50th Anvil  Award. Other programs which I was interested in were the Metrobank Foundation's MADE 2014 Project HeART (Art for Humanity), which showed impressive documentation and Avon's Do Something Beautiful Campaign, since this had a similar advocacy on breast cancer awareness.

From these  samples, I found out that I had to compute for Media Value and PR value, which I then had to research on, and indeed something very new to me!

Thanks Ms. May Datul of PRSP for being so accommodating!

So, we had to proceed with the writing with the new knowledge that had to be injected to the data that we had, which we had to complete in the next three weeks!

The Anvil results were relayed after two months, and we, in Ciudad Medical Zamboanga were so overjoyed that our project, the CMZ B.R.A. (Bra to Raise Awareness) Campaign Project won the GOLD ANVIL AWARD for Public Relations Programs: Specialized Advocacy Campaign for the innovative breast cancer advocacy program in Zamboanga City.

And so I again say, Thanks a million to these two Public Relation greats, and those like them (Norman Agatep), who continue to teach and inspire PR neophytes in our quest for improvement of our communication skills... in our journey to always go way beyond mediocrity... in our goal to achieve excellence in creativity and the victory of good (to borrow these phrases from Sir Ron Jabal).

Here is an excerpt of the Address of Chairman of the 51st Anvil Awards, Mr. Ron Jabal APR during the 51st Anvil Awards Gabi Ng Parangal.

We were told CMZ is the only Awardee from Mindanao and a Gold Award at that.... But PRSP would like to invite more organizations from outside of Mega Manila especially Visayas and Mindanao with dynamic initiatives and programs to vie for the 52nd Anvil Award this year and be recognized for your noble efforts!!!

Watch out for this by September or October 2016....