The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) has honored Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) with three Excellence Awards and DuPont with one Excellence and two Merit Awards, as part of the 2018 Gold Quill Awards program. For more than 40 years, IABC’s Gold Quill Awards have recognized excellence in strategic communication worldwide and are acknowledged as one of the most prestigious awards programs in the industry.
BMS earned an Award of Excellence in the Change Communications, Employee Engagement and Internal Communications categories. According to feedback from the IABC Gold Quill evaluators, BMS’ entry showed an “impressive work plan that created behavior change from a large audience, through enabling leaders, listening and being ahead of the stakeholders at all nodes of engagement.” Also of note, the campaign was “clear, consistent and clever, communicating key messages in a powerful, emotional way” and an “incredibly comprehensive program - fantastic use and engagement of leaders to front delivery.”
BMS partnered with Gagen MacDonald to engage leaders and employees to understand enterprise and functional changes and do their parts to focus resources, simplify work, and integrate efforts to deliver on the company’s ambitious transformation. Working broadly across the enterprise and deeply within each function, BMS and Gagen MacDonald utilized strategic change communication to introduce the operating model shift, support leaders to drive the change by listening and generating feedback, and engage employees around the organization’s new culture by shining a light on teams who are bringing the transformation to life by working in new ways. Through an extended period of significant change, the organization maintained focus on flawless delivery of critical medicines to patients who simply cannot wait.
Earlier this year, BMS’ enterprise-wide transformation also won three Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Awards and an In2 Innovation SABRE Award from The Holmes Report.
DuPont was recognized with an Award of Excellence in the Change Communications category and an Award of Merit in the Employee Engagement and Internal Communications categories for their “Countdown to Day One: Creating DowDuPont” campaign. “Every piece of the program had a purpose that was clearly articulated and delivered beautifully,” according to feedback from the IABC Gold Quill evaluators. “The work demonstrated clear alignment for business need, to goals, to communication objectives, to strategy, implementation and measurement. Materials were designed to influence how the organization and its leaders communicate and impact bottom-line results.”
DuPont partnered with Gagen MacDonald and Think Marketing to develop and implement communication strategies that enabled the business to deliver significantly improved results, minimize business disruption, and build employee and leader confidence in the future, in light of DuPont’s announcement to merge with The Dow Chemical Company and subsequently divide into three independent companies. Closing August 31, 2017, this deal was the largest industrial merger in history.
The “Countdown to Day One: Creating DowDuPont” program has previously won 10+ awards, including the 2018 PRWeek Best in Internal Communications Award, multiple at the 2017 IABC Gold Quill ceremony and one at the 2017 PRSA Silver Anvil ceremony, along with numerous IABC Heritage Region Silver Quill and IABC Chicago Bronze Quill awards.
The 2018 IABC Gold Quill Awards will be presented at IABC’s World Conference, to be held in Montreal, PQ, Canada 3-6 June 2018. More information on the World Conference is available at: http://wc.iabc.com/
About the International Association of Business Communicators
With 10,000 members and more than 100 chapters worldwide, the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) is the only global association that connects business communication professionals with the people and insights needed to drive business results. Founded in 1970 and supporting professional communicators at the heart of every organization, IABC serves the collective disciplines of business communication professionals through professional development offerings, certifications, awards and recognition programs, online resources, Communication World magazine and the annual World Conference.
