CATEGORY: EventPublic Sectore-shot-team

Inside the UnAwards Masterclass 2025: key takeaways

On April 30th, our team had the privilege of attending the UnAwards Masterclass 2025 in Birmingham – a day full of inspiration, insight, and storytelling that reminded us why communications in the public sector matter more than ever. 

 

Hosted by the ever-passionate Darren Caveney, the Masterclass brought together a room full of comms professionals from across the country to share lessons, celebrate success, and explore how to build better, more human connections in our campaigns. 

 

Four of us from the e-shot team – Mark Nicholson, Barnaby Stewart, Dan Hare, and Macita Hardacre – were there, soaking up ideas and discussing what they mean for the future of communications in the public sector. Here's what stood out to each of us: 

Dan Hare  

The UnAwards Masterclass 2025 was just as much a celebration of excellence in public sector communications as the UnAwards themselves in December. Perhaps more so as the audience heard the stories behind the campaigns and teams who were “UnAwarded” last December.  

Every presentation was excellent, but I wanted to pick out a few personal highlights:  

  

Little Heroes by Staffordshire County Council  

The winner of Best Creative Comms was a campaign to help improve primary school attendance called “Little Heroes”.  

Not only was the campaign delightful, (see for yourself in the video below), it has made a real impact on school attendance. There were so many aspects I loved about this work; they used AI to create the superhero characters; they embraced gamification by producing stickers and certificates for kids with excellent attendance  

It represents all that I love about public sector communications; hard-working and passionate comms professionals who take time to understand their audience and deliver highly effective messaging to drive behaviour change.  

It was very moving when Danielle, the author of the campaign acknowledged that the booklets to help kids deal with their anxiety about going to school was borne out of a combination of professional insight and lived experience dealing with anxiety.  

Watch the Little Hero's video

Online Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation prevention by Police Scotland  

 The adage of prevention is better than cure seemed particularly pertinent for the uncomfortable subject matter of Police Scotland’s winning entry for Best Collaboration.   

The very direct message to those who may consider committing such crimes was to get help. Navigating the potential PR backlash of a police force being seen to ‘help’ paedophiles was avoided through partnership with the Lucy Faithfull Foundation.  

Some of the figures shared as part of the presentation were mind-boggling, both in the severity of the problem and the impact of the campaign. This is important work that deserves recognition.   

Watch their video

Surrey Matters by Surrey County Council  

Disclaimer: Surrey are a customer, and I participated in judging this award!  

The presentation from Surrey County Council included a ringing endorsement of e-shot for which I am eternally grateful to Richard for saying, but the credit is due to him and his team. I can’t think of another customer who has so comprehensively used our technologies to best effect. Their flagship newsletter; Surrey Matters has a huge distribution and in Richard’s own words “we get more clicks through one issue of Surrey Matters than we do in a month’s worth of social media content.”  

Giving residents the news and information that most interests them seems like an obvious formula for success, yet many don’t do this, preferring to push content that may fit with strategic priorities, but does little to encourage readership. Surrey strike a good balance and promote things that are important to them amongst the stories that are important to residents.  

The Surrey Highways bulletin that featured in their award is the quintessential example of doing email well. A tightly defined subject matter, answering a resident need where information is both regularly updated and detailed. They consistently see click-through rates exceed 50% on these emails. A level that many would be happy with as an open rate.  

Watch the Surrey County Council e-shot case study

  

What award-winning work are you doing?  

Despite the whole day being a parade of winners, each and every presenter approached their presentations as a learning exercise for the audience. No boasting. No gloss. Warts and all accounts of their efforts, their setbacks and their results.  

The event has grown significantly in the few years we have been supporting it and I look forward to working with Darren on the 10th annual UnAwards this December. If any e-shot customer is working on a potentially award-winning campaign, please get in touch – we would love to help.  

Celebrating excellence and recognising the importance of the work public sector communications teams do is central to our own focus of being a responsible supplier. 

 

Mark Nicholson 

“It was a great pleasure to be in the plush surroundings of the Everyman theatre for the UnAwards Masterclass, hosted by Darren Caveney.  So many great presentations from the UnAwards winners.  I noticed a common theme emerging in two presentations, from Manchester City and Surrey CC.  The former had cleverly adopted various social channels to target their audiences – going where the eyes were – and measured their responses.  Similarly, Surrey used smart methods to establish a targeted and segmented approach to gain fantastic responses and outcomes via email.  Furthermore, Surrey has grown a huge reach of 300,000 subscribers, something the printed media in the county can only dream of!”

Macita Hardacre 

“Attending the UnAwards Masterclass is always a highlight for me. It's a unique opportunity to connect directly with customers and hear first-hand about the work they’re doing. I leave each session feeling energised and genuinely hopeful. These are people making a real difference in the lives of others through thoughtful, impactful communication and campaigns.”

 

Looking Ahead 

The UnAwards Masterclass left us energised,not just because of the great work we saw, but because of the people behind it. We’re more committed than ever to helping public sector teams deliver comms that are timely, trusted and inclusive. 

If you were there too, we’d love to hear what you took away. And if you’re curious about how e-shot can support your campaigns, our door is always open.