The PR teams at VisitScotland celebrated after recently scooping two top prizes in the CIPR Pride Awards.

For the second year in a row they won the prestigious In-house Team of the Year award, beating off competition from all over Scotland. They also won a gold award for the Integrated PR activity around the Hollywood blockbuster, The Da Vinci Code.

There were more than 1000 entries to the Pride Awards this year, acknowledged as "the Oscars" of the PR world – and VisitScotland was up against a range of in-house and PR agencies.

The Da Vinci Code work led to £6m worth of PR coverage throughout the world about Scotland and Rosslyn Chapel and the highlights of the campaign included more than 100 media from 18 countries coming to Scotland, some 50 pieces of positive corporate press, a glittering launch event in Edinburgh and Cannes and the production of a DVD which was distributed to over 500 film and travel media contacts.

The Team of the Year Award, which was a joint application focusing on the work of corporate communications, consumer PR and the regional External Relations Executives, highlighted the big achievements of the year for the teams including Da Vinci, Date a Hot Scot, the European cities campaign, and the launch of the Ambitions magazine for industry.

The team was short-listed in three other categories including the Crisis Management campaign for Avian Flu and the Consumer Campaign category for Date a Hot Scot. Karin Finlay, UK consumer PR manager, was a finalist for the Young Communicator of the Year Award – making it to a shortlist of four out of the whole of Scotland.