Busan City Wins 'Grand Prize' at 2022 Korea Public PR Awards... First Local Government to Receive Top Honor Twice

City Pride Promotion Project 'Busan Vibe' Campaign

Second Award Since 2017 Generation Communication 'The Heart of the Elderly'

Busan City is receiving the Grand Prize at the Korea Public PR Awards ceremony.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Kim Yong-woo] Busan City won the top prize at this year’s ‘Korea Public PR Awards.’

Busan City announced on the 8th that it received the grand prize at the ‘2021~2022 Korea Public PR Awards’ for the ‘Busan Vibe (BUSAN VIBE)’ campaign, a project that discovers and shares the city’s hidden pride together with its citizens.

Hosted by the Korean Advertising and Public Relations Society and sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Korea Public PR Awards have been held annually since 2015 to discover and award outstanding public relations cases such as policy promotions and campaigns carried out by local governments nationwide.

This grand prize is the second time Busan City has won since receiving the grand prize in 2017 for the generational communication project ‘The Heart of the Elderly.’ Busan City is the first to win the top prize twice. Additionally, in 2020, it received the highest award in the policy category for the Southeast Gate Airport promotion event ‘Air Terminal B.’

The ‘Busan Vibe’ campaign, which earned the honor of the grand prize, is a long-term project archiving elements that can inspire pride and dignity in the city of Busan by selecting one theme each year related to Busan’s people, places, food, culture, etc., under the key message ‘Busan becomes pride.’

Busan City was the first in the nation to attempt this to create ‘Busan, a city where people want to live again.’

To successfully launch this campaign, Busan City produced images and videos featuring the late Choi Dong-won, a pride of the baseball city Busan, representative landmarks symbolizing Busan such as Gwangandaegyo Bridge and Busan Tower, and promoted teaser marketing. The eight produced videos surpassed a total of one million views and received positive responses.

This year’s campaign included the ‘Godsaenglympics,’ selecting ‘Busan people’ who will become the pride of Busan, discovering a total of 153 Busan citizens active in various fields.

Participants in the Godsaenglympics responded with praise such as “Thank you for planning a program that is fun to participate in” and “Busan City is doing a great job.”

After the preliminary judging, the Godsaenglympics began the finals on the 7th and plans to select gold, silver, and bronze medal winners among the finalists.

The judging panel of the Korea Public PR Awards evaluated that the planning and promotion strategy of the ‘Busan Vibe’ campaign, which was the first attempt nationwide, was logical and that it was not a one-way campaign but led by mutually communicating sincere stories about the city from its citizens.

It is also known that the fact that most public campaigns are one-off but ‘Busan Vibe’ is conducted as a long-term campaign was highly rated.

Na Yoon-bin, spokesperson for Busan City, said, “The entire process of the campaign discovering and spreading citizens’ sincere stories about ‘Busan, a city where people want to live again’ received good evaluations,” and added, “We will continue campaigns that communicate and empathize with citizens.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.