HRManjgura Won Three International Polaris Awards for Crisis Communications in Tourism
The Viber Community Total Croatia Travel INFO project was awarded a silver Polaris award in the Social Media Campaigns and Creative Use of Data categories, and a bronze award in the Public Affairs Campaigns category.
The Viber Community Total Croatia Travel INFO project was awarded a silver Polaris award in the Social Media Campaigns and Creative Use of Data categories, and a bronze award in the Public Affairs Campaigns category.
At a big international competition, Polaris Awards, the Croatian public relations agency Manjgura won three awards for the campaign “Total Croatia Travel INFO – The vacation you deserve is closer than you think, you just need to cross the border.”
The project launched in the summer of 2020 in cooperation with Total Croatia News and Paul Bradbury, during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the goal of offering all potential tourists a relevant source of information.
With the support of the Mediacor agency, the Total Croatia Travel INFO Viber community was created, through which users received daily updates on measures currently in place and different ways to come to Croatia. Community members also had use of a chatbot – a virtual assistant, programmed to answer most frequently asked questions. However, the credit for the efficiency, accuracy, and self-sustainability of the project goes to hard-working volunteers that spent the summer updating the data multiple times a day and answering questions from users in the TCTI Viber community.
“After the International HUOJ Grand Prix, these three new awards are an additional confirmation of the value of the project, which started from a harmless comment on the Croatian-Slovenian border. The idea to enable people to get the right information through the channel that is most natural to people today – live chat, has turned into a platform that is continuously growing and is evolving from a Viber community into a real virtual tourist community“, said the director of Manjgura and initiator of TCTI, Krešimir Macan.
“I am often asked why we did this without any budget and what kept us going. We turned into a virtual reception office of Croatia and the main rule of a good host is not to refuse any guests. And the questions just kept on coming. There is an important factor that keeps getting forgotten: travel during the pandemic is very complex and challenging, even in its first step, for example, as a tourist board the plane. I am proud to say that all members of our community and all those who received our information successfully boarded their planes and landed in Croatia. I need to take this opportunity to thank the extremely friendly and professional employees of the Ministry of the Interior, who took the time out of their busy schedule to answer our questions and thus contributed to the accuracy of the information in our Viber community”, said Paul Bradbury, the founder of Total Croatia News and Total Croatia, emphasizing what without any advertising budget the community grew quickly to have over 9,000 members who accessed it up to 200,000 in a month.
This is the second project of Manjgura to win the Polaris Award, international recognition for political communication, and innovative use of communication technologies in public relations. Manjgura won the first award in 2018 in the category of political communication for the election campaign of Željko Burić and HDZ Šibenik titled “How Željko Burić became the first re-elected mayor of Šibenik in history”. This year’s award ceremony was held on Monday, May 31st at 8:00 PM via video link.
The Polaris Award is presented under the patronage of the European Association of Political Consultants (EAPC), the International Association of Political Consultants (IAPC), and the Latin American Association of Political Consultants (ALCP). Applicants can submit their projects in 18 different categories, such as Social Campaigns, PR Campaigns, Radio Campaigns, TV Campaigns, Mobile Campaigns, Fundraising Campaigns, etc. The organizers explain that Polaris is another name for the Pole star, the brightest star visible in the Northern Hemisphere. Just as it has guided explorers and pioneers for thousands of years as political advisors guide leaders, candidates, and movements today.
Tags: social media, polaris awards, public affairs, use of data
