BOGOTA WINS GLOBAL AWARD FOR BEST PR STRATEGY 2015

The Greater Bogota Convention Bureau during the awards ceremony at the ICCA (International Congress Convention Association) Global Congress in Argentina.

• The award was received by the Greter Bogota Convention Bureau for having developed a PR strategy to bring large-scale international events to the Colombian capital, by connecting all of the public and private promotion specialists in the city.

Under the 54th ICCA (International Congress and Convention Association) World Congress that took place this year in Buenos Aires, Bogota received the award for best PR strategy 2015. The recognition was granted to the Greater Bogota Convention Bureau.

After having competed with 418 cities from 111 countries, the Greater Bogota Convention Bureau entered the group of finalists along with the Bureaus from Dubai, Glasgow, London and the Brisbane (Australia) Convention Center, becoming the only representative from the Americas to be included in this select group.
 
Every year under the World Congress, ICCA in association with the International Meetings Review (IMR) deliver the Best PR Awards, where the best Public Relations campaigns are selected from amongst the participating countries as examples of best practices to be followed.

The scoring considered strategies with the greatest coverage, visibility, story-telling, brand consistency and creativity in the use of mass media, web and social networks.

Why Bogota?

The Greater Bogota Convention Bureau won for having developed its PR strategy to bring large-scale international events to the Colombian capital, by connecting all of the public and private promotion specialists in the city.

By creating the campaign called "People the Power of Hope", the organization worked for over nine months on a strategy to bring all of the players in the city together for a common goal: to make Bogota the venue for the global gathering of youth leaders, One Young World in 2017.

In order to achieve this, together with One Young World Colombia ambassadors, a large movement was created on networks and the mass media with national and international opinion leaders. Public and private institutions, civil society, companies, academia, a significant number of opinion leaders, and young entrepreneurs all joined the strategy which made Bogota the number one destination in Latin America for welcoming this important event, beating other cities with ample experience.

"With the 'People the Power of Hope' campaign, we wanted to show that the power of the people is what causes the real transformations, where the events industry becomes an engine for this purpose. When we connected the city, we managed to have public and private institutions feel as if the campaign were their own, we activated a global movement through social networks and had national and international opinion leaders and mass media talking about the good things that Bogota has to offer to the world."  Said Sandra Garcia, Executive Director of the Bogota and Cundinamarca Bureau of Conventions.

The president of Procolombia, Maria Claudia Lacouture pointed out that "this is the result of a joint effort that the organization carried out with regional bureaus so that the entrepreneurs and organizations of the world would recognize the country as a significant destination for meetings. Corporate tourism is one of the most important sources of income for the country, according to the ICCA, every traveler spends approximately US$410 daily, five times more than what is invested by a tourist on vacation."

"From the Bogota Chamber of Commerce we will continue to support these types of initiatives that contribute to Bogota's international positioning as an attractive destination for holding congresses, conventions and incentive travel. The process of signing the One Young World event became a stimulus that allowed for coordinating efforts in the public and private sector with regard to a city strategy, thus contributing to the transformation process that Bogota is experiencing.  This was reflected in One Young World's decision to hold their global congress in our city in 2017", said Jorge Mario Diaz, Vice President for Governance at the Chamber of Commerce of Bogota.

Organizations such as Colombia Joven, ProColombia, the Chamber of Commerce of Bogota, Invest in Bogota, Casa Editorial El Tiempo, the Centro Internacional de Convenciones Ágora and CORFERIAS, the District Tourism Institute, the Bogota Council, the Spanish American Youth Organization, Avianca, and a large number of companies from the private sector, among others, supported this initiative that places a city, a country and a region on the world stage with no limits and in which investments are worthy.