MOBILE, Ala. — The Mobile Chamber’s communications team has brought home three regional honors from the Southern Public Relations Federation, earning recognition for its work on a 2025 mayoral debate, the Chamber’s member travel program and a weekly column featuring President and CEO Bradley Byrne.
The Mobile Chamber communications awards were presented during the federation’s annual conference and Lantern Awards ceremony, which honors public relations work from across a four-state region along the Gulf Coast and Deep South.
The Three Awards
The Chamber’s team collected two Awards of Excellence and one Award of Merit, spanning three different kinds of work:
- Award of Excellence, Short-Term Strategic Programs, Community Relations and Public Service: the 2025 Mayoral Debate
- Award of Excellence, Long-Term Strategic Programs, Marketing: the Mobile Chamber Travel Program
- Award of Merit, Tactical Materials/Projects: the Membership Matters weekly column with Bradley Byrne
The mix reflects the range of work a chamber communications office handles, from civic events that draw the whole city’s attention to member benefits and the steady, week-to-week job of keeping businesses informed.
Byrne: Team Has ‘a Hand in Nearly Every Area’
Byrne, the former congressman who leads the Chamber, said the honors confirmed what he sees from the staff every day.
“Our communications team has a hand in nearly every area of the Chamber’s work, and these awards reflect what we see from them every day,” Byrne said. “They understand our goals, find effective ways to reach the people we serve and deliver work that strengthens our relationships with members and the broader community. We are proud to see their talent and dedication recognized across the region.”
Nancy Hewston, the Chamber’s vice president of communications and advocacy, said the awards carry extra weight because of how the entries were judged.
“These awards are especially meaningful because the entries were evaluated not only on the finished product, but also on the research, planning, implementation and results behind the work,” Hewston said. “Each project served a different purpose, from keeping our members informed to supporting civic engagement and promoting a valuable Chamber program. This success reflects the versatility of our communications team and the strong collaboration behind each initiative.”
Hewston’s department combines communications with the Chamber’s government affairs and advocacy work, and its staff includes specialists in communications, events, government affairs and brand marketing.
A Debate in a Pivotal Election Year
The Award of Excellence for community relations and public service honored the Chamber’s 2025 Mayoral Debate, part of a campaign season that reshaped Mobile’s city leadership.
Longtime Mayor Sandy Stimpson, who had led the city since 2013, chose not to seek a fourth term, opening the race to a crowded field. Four candidates competed in the Aug. 26, 2025, municipal election: Barbara Drummond, Spiro Cheriogotis, Paul Prine and Connie Hudson. No one won a majority, and Cheriogotis defeated Drummond in a Sept. 23, 2025, runoff with about 51% of the vote.
Candidate debates and forums were a regular feature of that race from winter through late summer. For a business organization, hosting such an event is a way to put questions about jobs, infrastructure, public safety and the local economy directly to the people who will manage the city’s budget. The Chamber also published election guides for voters covering the mayoral and City Council races.
The category the Chamber won, short-term strategic programs, is designed for campaigns and events with a defined start and finish, where judges want to see a clear objective, a plan built to reach it and evidence of what it accomplished.
Travel Program Wins for Marketing
The Chamber’s second Award of Excellence, in the long-term marketing category, went to the Mobile Chamber Travel Program.
The program organizes group trips that combine leisure travel with networking among Chamber members and others in the community. Trips are managed through a partner tour company that handles reservations and logistics, while the Chamber promotes the journeys and builds interest among its membership. The next trip on the calendar is a “Spain’s Costa del Sol & Madrid Discovery” tour scheduled for March 13-21, 2027, with stays in Fuengirola, a visit to Ronda, time in Madrid and an optional Barcelona extension.
Programs like this are common among larger chambers of commerce, which use them as a membership benefit and a way for business people to get to know each other outside a boardroom. Because the promotion runs across many months, from announcement to departure, it falls into the federation’s long-term program category.
The travel program is separate from the Chamber’s economic development and leadership trips, such as its Leaders Exchange visits, which take local business and civic leaders to other cities to study how they tackle growth.
‘Membership Matters’ Column Earns Merit Award
The third honor, an Award of Merit in the Tactical Materials/Projects category, recognized Membership Matters, the weekly column featuring Byrne.
Tactical entries are judged on individual pieces or series of communication materials rather than full campaigns. A weekly column is a steady production job: it has to arrive on schedule, explain Chamber priorities in plain language and give members a reason to keep reading.
Byrne brings a long public résumé to the column. Before joining the Chamber, he served on the Alabama State Board of Education, in the Alabama Senate, as chancellor of the state’s community college system and for three terms in Congress representing Alabama’s 1st District. The Chamber has announced that David Rodgers, its vice president of economic development, will succeed Byrne as president and CEO in July 2027, and Rodgers is now serving as president and CEO designate during the transition.
About the Southern Public Relations Federation
The Southern Public Relations Federation is a network of public relations professionals from Alabama, north Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi.
The federation was founded in 1972 by state public relations organizations from Alabama, Florida and Mississippi, and the Louisiana association joined the following year. Today its member organizations are the Public Relations Council of Alabama, the Public Relations Association of Mississippi, the Public Relations Association of Louisiana and the Emerald Coast Public Relations Organization in northwest Florida.
The Lantern Awards have been part of the federation since its beginning. The competition covers dozens of categories across three types of entries: long-term strategic programs, short-term strategic programs and tactical materials. Both professionals and students may enter, and eligible work must have been produced or appeared during the previous calendar year, which is why this year’s honors recognize 2025 projects.
How entries are judged
According to the federation, the Southern Public Relations awards recognize projects and programs that show excellence in both strategic process and measurable results. To keep the judging independent, entries are reviewed by public relations practitioners from outside the federation’s four-state region.
Judges score each entry on its own merits using the four-step RPIE process, a standard framework in the public relations field:
- Research: understanding the audience, the problem and the environment before acting
- Planning: setting measurable objectives and choosing strategies and tactics to meet them
- Implementation: carrying out the plan and communicating with the intended audiences
- Evaluation: measuring results against the original objectives
Entries can earn several levels of recognition. Awards of Merit and Awards of Excellence honor strong work, while the top-scoring entries receive the Lantern Award itself. The highest-scoring Lantern winners compete for Best of Tier and Best of Show honors.
Part of a Busy Season for the Chamber
The awards come during an active stretch for the Mobile Chamber. This week the organization also celebrated national accreditation from the International Economic Development Council, becoming one of 94 Accredited Economic Development Organizations in the country and the only one in Alabama. The Chamber has also been gathering input from local businesses to shape its 2027 legislative agenda, work that runs through the same communications and advocacy department honored by the federation.
The Mobile Chamber represents businesses across the Mobile area and leads the region’s efforts to recruit new employers and help existing companies grow. More information about its programs, including the travel program and weekly member communications, is available from the Chamber.