An award-winning entry
PA Housing
PR, media monitoring, thought leadership and media relations
By working really closely with us, the team at See Media understand our priorities and what we’re aiming to achieve in our communications. It also means they’re always on the look-out for opportunities for us. That extends to awards and the team have helped us to tell our story in a way that has resonated with judges and led to the success we’ve seen so far.
Communications Manager, PA HousingSee Media has been providing communications consultancy to 23,000-home housing association PA Housing since 2019. This includes making a strategic case for entering sector awards, and then researching, writing, and submitting the entries.
PA’s sector leading approach to equality, diversity and inclusion, as well as the work of its deeply committed involved residents, has led to award wins – but this case study will focus on the award-winning entry we submitted to the judges of the 2021 UK Housing Awards for Digital Landlord of the Year.
Prodo, PA Housing’s digital transformation agency, approached us about potentially submitting a joint entry between them and PA Housing into the Digital Landlord of the Year category.
It was then up to us to go away and talk to the PA team about the reasons why we would enter this award, and whether we felt the submission would be strong enough.
Having agreed that the entry would focus on the way PA engages with its focus group of residents to gather feedback about its My PA app – and also the marketplace it has developed on the app, enabling residents who run their own businesses can advertise their products and services – we decided to go ahead with it.
Using the technical information provided by Prodo, along with quotes from the team and customer testimonials, we put together an entry that met the criteria outlined by the award organisers.
PA Housing needed to demonstrate that it was a landlord ‘that has used technology to improve the resident experience, promote digital inclusion and improve business outcomes’.
Whenever the See Media team enters awards, we include powerful quotes alongside evidence and measures of success, along with contextual data such as sector average. Working in partnership with Prodo, we were able to draft an entry that would provide the answers to the judges’ questions. This then went to the PA team for approval, before being submitted.
Our work didn’t end there, though. The UKHA judging process usually includes an interview between members of a team and the award judges, but, due to Covid, the interviews for the 2021 awards could not go ahead. Instead, shortlisted entrants were given a week to record their pitch for why they deserve to win.
We gathered members of the PA team, including a resident board member, on a Zoom call, and recorded them discussing the reasons why PA’s work meant they should be named Digital Landlord of the Year.
On 25 November 2021, in partnership with Prodo, PA Housing was given the title Digital Landlord of the Year.
This provided a huge morale boost to the PA team and encouraged engagement from PA’s stakeholders, including sector peers and customers.