Like many other professions, career opportunities in the field of communications, public relations have widened significantly in the last couple of years. As Bangladesh’s economy is growing, career opportunities in government offices, businesses, banks, development entities, public and private universities for communications professionals have expanded. Encouraging numbers of young media and communications professionals are now joining this challenging profession considering long and short-term benefits in this arena.
Communication professionals need to be well-aware about the image building process. Though, there are good numbers of ways to promote organizations in media and public sphere, winning awards are the most used and recognized ways of image building process. For example, City Bank (Bangladesh) won The FinanceAsia award, a prestigious award in 2018. In Bangladesh there are a good number of awards on development of social, business, development, banking organizations being presented to companies and persons for their immense contribution in areas concerned. Qualified experts and organizations should compete for such awards for promoting their organizations in a positive manner.
Communications persons working in business sector can compete for awards, presented by Bangladesh Brand Forum (BFF). The BFF awards, one of the prestigious awards in Bangladesh are presented mostly to business organizations in different categories like Telecommunications Service Provider, Superstore, Edible Oil etc. Apart from these categories, there are some awards of BFF on communication for marketing, campaign etc which also can be learning tools for PR persons.
The Award on Excellence in Creative Communication by BFF on Integrated Campaign, Rural Marketing etc is also a good example. There are also some excellent awards for business organizations like Bangladesh Business Awards, ICAB National Awards for Corporate Governance Excellence, ICMAB Awards, ICSB National Awards for Corporate Governance Excellence, President’s Award for Industrial Development etc.
The South Asian Business Excellence Awards of Asian Confederation of Business Council, Award for Excellence in Social Media Marketing: CMO Asia; The Golden Globe Tigers Award; The South Asian Business Excellence Awards: Asian Confederation of Business Council are some other awards which can also be explored for image building.
There are some other potentials awards for significant contribution in specific areas CSR, Agriculture. Standard Chartered – Financial Express CSR Award is one of the best awards for encouraging corporate and business organizations on CSR. Agrow Award: Standard Chartered Bank also encourages business organizations for making immense contribution in agriculture developments.
Apart from business issues, there are some awards for development issues. HSBC – The Daily Star Climate Awards is an initiative that seeks to recognize organizations and individuals actively working towards preserving the environment and managing the risk of climate change through their business practices, socially-driven initiatives or valuable knowledge sharing practices since 2010.
The award is very encouraging for moving ahead but focal persons should share the news for internal and external people through reports, press releases, features/articles on mainstream and social media. As a result, the target groups like government, donors, consumers will be duly informed on such achievements.
The writer works at Khan Bahadur Group