Trade Group Awards Pitzer for Marketing Design

Pitzer College was recognized by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP) on Oct. 26, when the college won two MarCom Awards for excellence in marketing design.A platinum award in the category of “Magazine: Educational Institution” went to the Fall 2008 issue of The Participant, the quarterly publication put out by Pitzer’s Office of Public Relations.A collection of new-student orientation materials from this year’s “Welcome Week” earned a gold award in the category for marketing, promotion campaigns, and special events.“I was pleasantly surprised,” said Pitzer Vice President for Public Relations and Marketing Kira Poplowski. “We [entered the contest] for a few reasons, first because I was new and I wanted to see if what we were doing made sense.”Since Poplowski joined the board in September 2008, the Office of Public Relations has experimented with a new “Pitzer look” that she describes as clean and friendly, but also “almost handmade—really individualistic” in a way that reflects the college’s grassroots history.“The overall goal for the institution is to keep growing its reputation” Poplowski said. “Pitzer is relatively young; it’s under 50 years old, but it’s in the top 50 in the U.S. News rankings, it leads the country in number of students who study abroad [and] number of Fulbright Fellowships that the campus produces. And so we look at all these things and use it to create kind of a distinct identity, to create a national image for the school.”The AMCP, which issued the two awards, is a Texas-based organization that honors excellence in marketing and communication through several international competitions.According to the association’s Web site, entries are judged on a 100-point scale by a panel of industry professionals.