Because our agency team is composed of people with vast media experience, we’ve worked in many publishing houses and editorial offices at various positions, from a trainee to a publisher, and we often jostle with our clients for the shape of a single sentence. These “fights” are necessary because they allow us to produce content that is pleasant to read – this is wisely explained in the interview “Plain language respects the customer” by Dr Tomasz Piekot, linguist and efficient writing coach, and Dr Marek Maziarz, expert in linguistic technologies.
Each year we encourage our clients to participate in the Pióra Roku competition presenting the best examples of high quality content marketing and emphasizing the values of journalism based on good practices and focusing on the recipient’s needs. The competition shows that this type of content creation requires the same skills, talent and engagement as traditional journalism. Whenever our clients are awarded with Pióra Roku we are happy to see that our hints have helped produce content that is recognized as a good example. In the latest competition as many as 5 authors of our clients were awarded: from Grupa Żywiec, Deutsche Bank  and ING Bank Śląski – and we took part in writing all of these texts.

• In the category Publication for Employees: Man, the Golden Pen went to Marta Czarnik-Starypan for her article “The Queen is most important” (“Biromaniak” magazine). The author works in the Complaints and Settlement department of Grupa Żywiec, where she processes key customers’ motions, and writing for “Biromaniak” gives her a chance to develop her interest in journalism.
  
• In the category Publication for Employees: Company, the Golden Pen went to another GŻ author, Barbara Szadkowska for her article “The third dimension of sales!”. For the past two years she has been working at the Corporate Department of GŻ and, as she herself emphasizes, contributing to the magazine brings a lot of satisfaction to her, while reporting and interviewing allows her to meet new people and to learn about their experience and views.
 In addition to this, the Bronze Pen also went to Barbara Szadkowska for her “Women’s point of view.”
• What about the authors from ING Bank Śląski? In the category Publication for Employees, Man, the Bronze Pen went to Agnieszka Rdzawska-Szczerek for her article “Why Noble Prize Winners don’t know how to call an Elevator.” The author is a communication expert at ING Bank Śląski where she has been dealing with internal communication for over 10 years. She is also involved in programs for kids and youth by the ING Dzieciom foundation and edits “Baśka” bimonthly for employees.
  
• In the category Publication for Customers: Company, the Silver Pen went to Anita Buczkowska for the article “Innovation conditioned by social capital.” The article was published in “Baśka” magazine. The author is a communication expert at ING Bank Śląski. She has been dealing with internal communication for 10 years. At ING she coordinates non-financial company data reporting and building a strategic attitude to corporate social responsibility. Prior to joining the bank she worked for non-governmental organizations and advising companies.
• Last but not least, authors from Deutsche Bank. In the category Publication for Employees: Event, the Bronze Pen went to Małgorzata Remisiewicz for her text “Our honey” published in the magazine for employees “ONE”. This author had a slight advantage over the remaining winners as she is a journalist contributing regularly to Deutsche Bank publications.

It wasn’t at all easy to win all these awards, as each year the competition jury is composed of experts of highest class. In the latest competition the head of the jury was Jacek Wasilewski, who works at the Journalism and Political Sciences Department, University of Warsaw, where he deals with media rhetorics and message efficiency. He also deals with media message semiotics and the cultural patterns of media use at the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities.
 Another member of the jury was Jakub Ciastoń, editor-in-chief of redbull.pl, previously a sports journalist for “Gazeta Wyborcza” for 12 years, Olympic Games correspondent in Turin, Beijing, Vancouver and London. Not less tough juror was Emilia Skiba, culture anthropologist who cooperated with e.g. Center for Contemporary Art Zamek Ujazdowski and currently is a coordinator at Loesje Polska (Loesje is a group of people operating around the globe who want to inspire others to taking up socially important initiatives) and – most importantly – creative writing moderator teaching her own method.
Being awarded by such experts brings double satisfaction, but what’s most important – these awards prove that working on the quality of content brings effects. Keep up the good work!