Cicada Communications has been shortlisted for a prestigious national award.

We are one of the nominees in the ‘Not-for-profit’ category of the CIPR Excellence Awards for our work on National Insect Week 2008 for the Royal Entomological Society (RES).

Cicada created the bi-annual National Insect Week for the RES in 2004 to help the Society in its core aim of raising awareness about the importance of insects. Building on the success of the two previous National Insect Weeks, the 2008 event embraced a raft of new elements including video and online polling.

The Cicada team achieved over 600 pieces of media coverage, which included everything from the Daily Telegraph and The Beano.

The Excellence Awards aim to recognise and reward best practice in public relations throughout the UK and acknowledge personal and team achievement at the highest professional level. This year, more than 900 entries were received across the 27 categories.

Cicada’s senior account manager, Liz Powell, said: “National Insect Week is always great fun to work on but we knew we really had to pull something out of the bag to make it bigger and better than in previous years.

“The team worked exceptionally hard this year and I’m pleased that our creativity, dedication and expertise has been recognised.”

CIPR director general Colin Farrington added: “It gives me even greater pleasure than usual to be able to announce we received a record number of Excellence Awards entries this year. Over 900 submissions across the 27 award categories entered to win one of these highly esteemed awards.

“We all know that awards are profile raising gold for the finalists and winners, but they have significance for the industry as a whole too. By demonstrating the value public relations can add to business and society they make it that bit easier for us to prove our worth and justify our budgets, which is of even greater import at this time.

“So, congratulations to those short listed on reaching this stage. Your success is a good result all round.”

The overall winners will be announced at an Awards Dinner at the Honourable Artillery Company Gardens in London in July.