The 23rd annual ARC Awards competition, organized and hosted by Mercomm, Inc. took place on the evening of September 17 at the InterContinental - The Barclay New York in New York City. Dubbed the “Academy Awards of Annual Reports,” the ARC awards is the foremost international competition honouring outstanding achievement in Annual Reports. Judged by peers in the field of Annual Report communications, reports that were submitted for the competition faced stiff competition as the event drew 1,800 entries from 25 countries.

Going into the evening, the GTAA was advised in advance of several awards to be received for both the 2008 Annual Report as well as the 2007 Corporate Social Responsibility report.

Entitled “Minutes from the Airport,” the 2008 Annual Report is an exploration into how our customers view the value of what we offer and provides a look back at the year that was 2008.



Minutes from the Airport was acknowledged with the following:

• Gold, Written text
• Gold, Interior design
• Gold, Non-traditional
• Bronze, Photography
• Bronze, President's letter
• Honours, Cover Photo.Design


Outside, Inside, Upside – A three-dimensional look at Corporate Social Responsibility is the GTAA’s first major effort at producing a CSR report that covered off all three elements of CSR reporting; social, environmental and financial.

The GTAA is thrilled to have won the following awards for the inaugural CSR report:

• Gold overall for CSR reports
• Silver, Interior design
• Silver, Written text
• Honours, Illustrations

Based on the GTAA’s gold placement in a variety of categories, we were also eligible for additional “Best of Show” awards. And the winners were…

In its first ever appearance at the ARC Awards, the CSR report walked away with "Best of Social Public Responsibility Reports.”

The 2008 Annual Report also won "Best of Show Non-Traditional Annual Reports," and we happily took home “Best of Canada” for the same book.

The GTAA extends a special thanks to Mercomm Inc. and all of the judges that took part in evaluating the entries, as well as the following GTAA partners who worked on the two award winning publications: S.D. Corporate Communications, Soapbox Design Communications, Doug Dolan (Annual Report writing) James Morris (CSR writing), Chris Thomaidis (Annual Report photography) and Ben Weeks (CSR Illustrations).

The 2008 Annual Report and the 2007 Corporate Social Responsibility Report are available on our website.

Hard copies of the Annual Report can be requested by sending an e-mail to publication@GTAA.com.