Bank wins big at AGR awards
Wednesday, 9 July 2008... and, no, we're not talking about the casino that followed the Association of Graduate Recruiters' 2008 gala awards dinner, held at Newport's Celtic Manor resort on the evening of Monday 7th July. Shortly after picking up the evening's final category award - a new category for best practice in graduate development - representatives of the Bank of England returned to the stage to collect the Blue Riband for best work of the year from new AGR chair Terence Perrin. Significantly, both awards were credited to ‘in house'.
Prior to this five other category awards had been announced at the ceremony (put together by Stafford Long and presented by academic, author and broadcaster Professor Laurie Taylor). First up was best literature, won by Accenture and Barkers, with the Audit Commission and ThirtyThree West taking best website.
In the heavily-subscribed best integrated marketing campaign category there were special commendations for the National Audit Office/TMP and KBC Financial Products/SAS, plus a ‘highly commended' for the Foreign & Commonwealth Office/Barkers entry, which was adjudged to have run the eventual winners very close. However all of these were finally edged out by Barclays Bank and ThirtyThree.
In the graduate selection and assessment category, the award went to the Financial Services Authority - another victory for ‘in house', incidentally - while ThirtyThree completed another good night by picking up the innovation on campus award for RWE npower.
Entertainment at the Shell-sponsored dinner was provided by the AGR's answer to the three tenors - Tenors Incognito - who proceeded to cover the highs and lows of the tenor repertoire from Puccini to Queen (we'll leave you to work out which was which). This was followed by a disco and a casino, while for the very late owls GTI's Simon Rogers could also be heard tinkling the ivories of the Merlin's Bar grand well into the early hours.
As usual, the conference made one final award (presented just before break-up and departure on the Tuesday) for best exhibition stand. This went to GTI (with a little help from Chico).
