Waynesburg University has been recognized for its creative excellence in marketing and communications in education in 2018 with two CUPPIE Awards. The awards, given by College and University Public Relations and Associated Professionals [CUPRAP], were a gold and a bronze CUPPIE.

The university received its gold award for the production of the 2015-2016 Annual Report.

This was an especially proud achievement for Stacey Brodak, vice president for Institutional Advancement and University Relations because the entire product was done “in-house” by members of the Waynesburg team.

“They have a division and they do awards for campaigns for universities … they do them for in-house design as opposed to as to external, where you’re hiring externally for a marketing firm to do them,” said Brodak. “Almost exclusively, all our work is done in-house and that’s pretty remarkable for a school of our size and a department of our size, that we’re doing all of our marketing work internally.”

Brodak, along with the rest of the members of the team do all of the creative work, marketing and writing that is part of the process. The newest challenge for the team is the new marketing message in the GROW Campaign.

“What I would want to strongly applaud is our university’s in-house team, that we’re able to do this. It saves the university a tremendous amount of resources that we are able to do the campaigns with just our in-house staff,” said Brodak.

Brodak also said that audiences would never be able to tell the difference between the Waynesburg team’s work and a professional marketing group because they are of just as high quality.

According to Brodak, saving money isn’t the only benefit of doing this type of work with an in-house team, as opposed to hiring a marketing firm.

“When you talk about message, and particularly for our institution, you really want to have someone that understands it. Another piece of this is when you talk to perspective students, undergraduate students or graduate students, they know if something doesn’t feel authentic or it’s a sales pitch,” said Brodak. “So you really have to do a good job, I think, of presenting the university in an authentic way, and I think that would be very difficult to do if you weren’t housed here on campus and really, fully understand who we are, what our mission is, what our students are all about, what they’re wanting to experience and what we have to offer.”

Waynesburg also won a bronze CUPPIE in “PR and Marketing – Special Event Promo” for its Day of Giving Campaign in 2016. In total, the university has won five CUPPIE awards, a gold and a bronze in 2018, a bronze in 2017, and a gold and a bronze in 2016.

The team is also planning on turning in the Day of Giving campaign from this year in next year’s CUPPIE awards because it show President Douglas Lee’s personality and how much it reflected his love of running along with the university’s desire raise money.