David McGuire

A marketing strategist who used Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to create forklift safety awareness has been nominated for the innovation award from business network The Hub.

David McGuire, from industrial marketing agency John Knowles Company, is the creative brain behind the Fork Lift Truck Association (FLTA)'s National Fork Lift Safety Week marketing campaign. By combining regional and industry-based news with social media websites to promote the safety week, the FLTA has received numerous responses for its resources.

In September, press and online media coverage prompted thousands of companies to contact the FLTA for safety packs, download resources or view training videos online, quadrupling traffic at its website www.fork-truck.org.uk.

FLTA CEO David Ellison says the interest in this year's Safety Week "far exceeds" anything the association has achieved before.

"A good deal of the credit must go to David McGuire and his colleagues at the John Knowles Company, for their innovative ideas and sheer hard work. This nomination is richly deserved," Ellison says.

McGuire says he is privileged to work with extremely talented and dedicated people, and that the work being recognised was "very much a joint effort".

"Awards are great, but being told your work may actually have saved someone's life, that's a real buzz. So in a way I feel like we've been rewarded already," he adds.

The award will be presented after a dinner at the Atlantic Hotel in Newquay, Cornwall.

According to John Knowles Company, there were not many news reports about serious forklift incidents in September, traditionally the materials handling industry's deadliest month. There are no official statistics on forklift incidents for the period at press time.