TimeZoneOne Honored with Three PCC Golden Trumpet Awards

CHICAGO – TimeZoneOne (TZO), a global creative communications agency, has been awarded top honors at the 60^th annual Publicity Club Chicago (PCC) Golden Trumpet Awards. The team of seasoned PR professionals was honored with a Gold and two Silver awards for the agency’s work with Illinois Office Of Tourism and the Chicago Wolves. The Publicity Club of Chicago Golden Trumpet Awards is one of the most prestigious awards programs for Chicagoland public relations professionals, honoring distinguished individual achievement in public relations, marketing and communications campaigns and events. The coveted Golden Trumpet Awards are presented for excellence in planning, creativity, execution and results measurement.

“Being honored with these awards is absolutely humbling and sets the standard for the type of public relations approach that TimeZoneOne puts forward every single day,” said Daniel Thomas, president and CEO of TimeZoneOne. “We decided to diversify our business after 25 years of learning to include public relations and to be recognized to this extent is a true testament of the PR professionals we have in our business”

Since 2017, TZO has been the public relations agency of record for the Illinois Office of Tourism (IOT), executing public relations, content and website development work. In its first year of earning the IOT business, TZO launched a brand new website which won U.S. Travel Association’s Mercury Award for outstanding travel website. Additionally, in 2018 TZO’s digital and communications campaigns resulted in more than 965 domestic earned media placements, a 43 percent increase in website traffic and 363 percent increase in social media traffic.

TZO’s public relations work was the shining star at the 2019 PCC Awards ceremony on June 6. Here is a look at the campaigns for which they were honored:

TZO’s work on the Illinois Office of Tourism #AmazingForAll campaign earned a Gold Trumpet Award in the Special Events category. This initiative called for TZO’s public relations team to organize a community activation to celebrate “Amazing for All” (AFA), IOT’s new LGBTQ+ and diversity campaign. To launch the campaign, local artist and LGBTQ+ ally Matthew Hoffman was commissioned to create a 6-by-23-foot wooden sculpture of #amazingforall to serve as a centerpiece. The artwork was unveiled during the Midwest’s largest street festival, Northalsted Market Days, which spans a half mile in Boystown – America’s first recognized gay neighborhood. The agency’s strategic communications campaign had a minimal budget for paid efforts, so the focus was on earned opportunities. The campaign was incredibly successful with impressive results:

• A 350 percent increase in media traffic to the AFA lading page during the event and the week after
• 8,500 new likes on their social media channels
• Increased #AmazingForAll hashtag usage by 55 percent
• Garnered more than 28.5 million impressions from eight feature stories, both nationally and internationally

The award-winning agency earned a Silver Trumpet Award in the Media Relations category for its work on IOT’s Frank Lloyd Wright Trail (FLWT) during National Travel and Tourism Week (NTTW) . For this campaign, TZO’s communications team was tasked with attracting domestic and international leisure travelers to the area and encouraging them to partake in multi-day road trips within the state of Illinois. TZO developed these multi-day trip itineraries featuring the 13 public Frank Lloyd Wright sites throughout the state, all while keeping hotel bookings in mind, IOT’s key business objective. The FLWT was unveiled during a press conference at the Frank Lloyd Wright Home & Studio in Oak Park, and additional press events were coordinated during NTTW at Frank Lloyd Wright homes in Rockford, Springfield and Kankakee, providing opportunities for local media across the state to cover the announcement in their own markets. As a result of the agency’s creative communications campaign, the team secured 178 local, regional, national and international media placements reaching an estimated audience of 318.4 million with a combined media value of $1.2 million.

“TimeZoneOne continues to be a trusted partner of  the Illinois Office of Tourism, and we could not be more pleased that their hard work on our behalf is being recognized,” said Jan Kemmerling, acting director of Illinois Office of Tourism. “We’re proud to share this accolade and look forward to continuing to innovate the state’s tourism and destination initiatives.”