Grand Prairie Wins National Innovation Award

Grand Prairie Wins National Innovation Award

Published on September 17, 2026

The City of Grand Prairie's Communications and Marketing department took home the "Most Innovative Communications" award in the national 3CMA Savvy Awards competition, September 10 in Denver.

The winning entry, titled #ByeByeByeLawson, was a 19-month internal communications campaign aimed at boosting employee morale ahead of the City's ERP system transition from Lawson to Workday. The City had been using Lawson since the early 2000s.

"This is one of the biggest technology changes we've made in over 20 years, and it will affect every employee," said Bill Hills, Grand Prairie City Manager.

To highlight how long the City had been using Lawson, and why it was time for a change, the marketing team developed a fun communications strategy centered around early 2000s nostalgia.

"The idea was to remind employees where they were and how they felt when certain songs, shows and movies were popular to emphasize how much time has passed," said Eric Alvarez, assistant director of Communications and Marketing. "It's one thing to tell a person how many years have gone by. It's quite another to let them feel it for themselves."

In March 2025, #ByeByeByeLawson kicked off with a motivational video from *NSYNC's Lance Bass for City employees. The campaign followed up with early 2000s videos, communications, prizes and employee appreciation events. Events featured popular playlists loaded with early 2000s hits and event photographs were captured on disposable film cameras that were given to employees.

At the center of the campaign was the popular CD case logo designed by multimedia specialist Michelle Hill. The design features pop music elements as well as an image of Grand Prairie City Hall in the early 2000s next to another from 2025.

"What gets people excited is music and pop culture," Hill said. "I wanted to create a feeling of nostalgia to connect to our target audience. The logo was inspired by NSYNC album covers alongside the typography, the font and colors."

Altogether, the #ByeByeByeLawson campaign led to impressive numbers in a change-readiness survey in which 95 percent of employees said they were open to exploring the benefits of Workday, and 88 percent said they were excited to say "bye bye bye" to Lawson and "hello" to Workday.

The campaign and continuing efforts over a year and a half impressed the 3CMA SAVVY Award judges.

"It's really fun to see a team put efforts into internal comms," one anonymous judge said in the scoring. "This audience can often get forgotten! This is a really fun and engaging way to encourage change, and to get an 88 percent engagement rate of people excited about change is rare.

Nineteen months after the campaign launched and one week before the citywide system transition, The City-County Communications & Marketing Association recognized #ByeByeByeLawson as the most innovative communications campaign in the country at its annual conference.

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