Event Venues won the runner’s up award for best marketing of a New Zealand event based around the successful weekend of activities that launched the Energy Events Centre in March. Taranaki’s Womad Festival won the top event marketing award.

The prestigious Event Industry Awards were staged during this week’s New Zealand Association of Event Professionals’ annual conference in Auckland.

Event Venues’ sales and marketing manager Diana Moore said she was over the moon to learn of their success.

“The award is all the more significant because it’s given by our peers in the New Zealand events industry, and we were up against some of the biggest and best in the business.

“Our marketing team only comprises two people – sales and marketing coordinator Michelle Adam and me – so we had our work cut out to pull together a multi-faceted marketing programme that would capture the imagination of our targeted audiences.”

“We developed an innovative marketing plan around a very tight budget and the huge numbers of residents who turned up to the public events was evidence of its stunning success. Equally important to us, and one of our specific marketing objectives, was the overwhelmingly positive feedback we had from residents who came along to see the city’s new events facility.”

Mrs Moore said it was important from the beginning that the community embraced the Energy Events Centre, felt proud of it and recognised the huge potential it had to bring economic benefit to the city.

“I think we achieved that objective, and clearly the amount of business we’ve attracted to the facility, along with this award, demonstrates that the country’s events industry has been equally impressed.”