Almost every survey about Millennials in the workplace will suggest that young’uns expect their employer to behave ethically or responsibly. For employer brand and reputational issues, companies have long pursued corporate social responsibility or sustainability programmes that seek to do good in the world. Many achieve their objectives and see great success, both in terms of the beneficiary and on the business’ own bottom line. Communicating about those objectives and successes is not as easily achieved.

The EVCOM Clarion Awards has, for 12 years, promoted raising the standards of communications about CSR and celebrated achievements made by businesses in this area. For live events and video communications professionals, this event values work done to encourage an ethical culture or engage with environmental or social issues.

Steve Garvey, chairman of EVCOM, says, “We are always amazed to see the creativity of the work evolve, expand and impact audiences of all levels. Without such ground-breaking communications, engagement concerning social and or environmental issues could otherwise go unnoticed and more importantly, unchallenged. This year’s record number of entries and its sold out event prove that through working together we can uncover, share and scale exciting ideas and stories for a thriving future.” 

At the 2015 edition of the awards, held yesterday in Covent Garden, winners from as diverse organisations as Shell and Unilever, and Tusk Trust and the National Trust were recognised. The 'Champions award,' given to the best overall campaign entered into the Clarions, was bestowed upon GlaxoSmithKline. GSK’s fast-tracked Ebola vaccine made a real difference to the health workers battling the spread of the virus across west Africa. The pharma firm partnered with GrosvenorFilm to explain the process it took to create, test and distribute the vaccine. The film also took home the silver for ‘Brand communication/experience’ and the ‘Innovation award’ as well as a highly commended in the ‘Social film’ category.

Managing director of GrosvenorFilm, Des Good, says, “It’s fantastic to receive such recognition and have the opportunity to contribute in some way to such a worthwhile project and prominent humanitarian issue.”

Active Training Team grabbed three golds, a bronze and a silver for harrowing training film and experience, ‘An epic experience: A day in the death of Michael Clarke.’ YSS, the young carers’ charity, won two golds and a silver for its work on a conference and film with drp. Shell also won a gold in live events innovation and ‘Production achievement’ for its development of player-powered pitches in Brazilian favelas.

For almost every winner, from the National Trust to Lockheed Martin, CSR has become a core part of the brand. It is something a company, like Shell or GSK, does not just because it should, but because there is a business case for doing so. Like any other area of operations, that work must be communicated. The work carried out by live events and video communications professionals is one of the primary ways in which it does so.

EVCOM is automatically submitting the gold winners in the live events categories into its upcoming EVCOM Live Awards' CSR category and ditto the gold winners from the film categories in regards to the EVCOM Screen Awards.

The full list of winners is as follows: