Pictured: From the front, left, Justin Woodman (Box Clever Marketing) and Julie Tew (Heritage Motor Centre), and back, from the left, Penny Tyler (Heritage Motor Centre) and Sarah Stretton (Box Clever Marketing) 

A rapidly growing creative communications agency has played a major role in a leading Warwickshire conference venue being shortlisted for a prestigious national award.

Box Clever Marketing from Ettington Business Park in Stratford worked with the Heritage Motor Centre in Banbury Road, Gaydon, on its conference campaign which was submitted to the Meetings Industry Marketing Awards (MIMA) 2011.

And the Heritage Motor Centre is among the final quartet for the Best Brochure - Venues/Destinations category alongside the Hong Kong Tourism Board, the Jersey Conference Bureau and Victory Services Club in London.

All the award winners will be announced at the Park Plaza Riverbank London on Monday, October 17.

Box Clever Marketing started with detailed planning as well as client research before developing an integrated campaign including a brochure and e-brochure. The project was so successful it even expanded into the reception area to improve its communication with its targeted audience, increase bookings and occupancy and maintain the day delegate rate during the economic downturn.

Justin Woodman, managing director of Box Clever Marketing, said he was proud to have been involved in a campaign which has received national recognition.

"Our ethos is to dig deeper than any other agency to deliver commercial Return On Investment (ROI) to our clients," he said. "We carried out significant research before we developed the creative concepts and ideas to hit the conference targets and grow the conference business.

"It was important we felt to focus on their unique selling points - the expert and personable team, the large amount of conference space, its central location, the positive comments from its clients and that delegates can look round the Heritage Motor Centre for free.

"We developed an integrated campaign with the tagline 'an ideal blank canvas for conferences, meetings and events' and the campaign has taken the profile of the Heritage Motor Centre to a higher level.

"We are all about big creative ideas to hit targets and grow business. We love working with winning businesses and helping them succeed. Our clients relationships are essential to us which is reflected in the fact we have just achieved Recommended Agency Status which means we must be ranked excellent by three or more clients, and we are keeping our fingers crossed the Heritage Motor Centre will be one of the winners at MIMA 2011."

Penny Tyler, marketing officer at the Heritage Motor Centre, said staff were thrilled to have been shortlisted for a national award.

"We hold conferences for blue-chip clients ranging from O2 and Hewlett Packard to Tesco and Virgin but we are still relatively unknown for the fantastic and diverse range of conference facilities that we have," she said.

"We are competing against key global destinations for this award but the fact we have been shortlisted proves the calibre of the creative talent that there is here in Warwickshire.

"The encouraging outcome of the campaign is reflected by occupancy rising by seven per cent, confirmed bookings from new customers increasing by 25 per cent and the e-brochure on our website receiving 765 unique views.

"And eight per cent of our confirmed bookings so far this year have come via online sources compared to five per cent for the entire 2010 so we are extremely pleased with the success of the campaign."