In the Data Publishers Association (DPA) Awards for Excellence and Achievement, the ENDS Legal Compliance Manager database service was named Digital Service of the Year, and the team behind the The Guide directory took away the title of Advertising Sales Team of the Year.
The Awards were held on October 22 at the De Vere Grand Hotel in Brighton, and were attended by many key players in the online publishing industry, including representatives from Reed Business Information, Lexis Nexis, Microsoft Ltd, United Business Media (UBM) and the Financial Times.
The ENDS Legal Compliance Manager, which is a subscription-based reference service for environmental professionals, won against a number of long established and strong competitors, including environmental publisher Faversham House Group for Edie.net, Reed Business Information’s Bankersalmanac directory and the Financial Times.
Dr Catherine Wilson, who led the research, development and launch of the ENDS Legal Compliance Manager said that is was “a completely new online product development area for Haymarket and we faced many uphill challenges in launching it successfully within a very competitive marketplace.
“Winning against some very strong and well-established database publishers is a fantastic achievement for us all and testament that we achieved what we set out to achieve – to develop a first class online database product recognised for its innovative tools and quality of information and which we could be proud of selling under the ENDS branding.”
The Guide, a venue and supplier directory for the events industry, was also up against strong competitors – Thomson Local, the Yell group (publisher of the UK Yellow Pages directory and Reed Business Information’s Bankersalmanac.
Victoria Chapman, senior advertising manager for The Guide said that the advertising sales team “worked tirelessly to produce an innovative new product in a highly competitive market place. The Guide is now a strong brand within the Event portfolio and played a pivotal role in our strategy to convert business from exclusive advertisers with other publications in the events market.
“As a result of the success of The Guide we have since launched two unique live events which have further contributed to our sales achievements in 2009 despite the challenging economic climate.”
The Data Publishers Association (DPA) is the association of UK directory, data and search publishers.
