Tag Archives: The Earnies

Earlier this month, we announced the winners of our 2^nd earned media awards program, The Earnies.  The caliber of work was impressive and is testament to the fact that PR professionals and marketers are truly pushing creative boundaries and thinking outside the box to successfully connect with their audiences and drive business results.  And with thousands of votes cast by our community, this year’s winners can walk away knowing their work was admired not just by us, but by their peers.

The winners are:

The Earnies Grand Prix:   The Advertising Council

Campaign: “FWD Campaign” by the Ad Council and USAID

A snapshot of the Multimedia News Release used to promote the FWD>> campaign. Click on the image to see the actual MNR.

 In an effort to raise national awareness about the famine, war and drought in the Horn of Africa, The Ad Council joined forces with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and created the FWD (Famine, War, Drought) campaign, encouraging Americans to FWD the facts about the crisis and support relief operations.  By leveraging a variety of social media channel and the influence of their partners, allies and agencies to spread the message, the Ad Council achieved astounding results – reaching millions of people, igniting incredible audience interaction and generating an impressive amount of content surrounding the campaign.

Best Use of Video in Social Media: LatentView Analytics

Campaign: Confessions of a Serial Analyst

In order to showcase their workplace culture, LatentView Analytics tested their filmmaking skills and also put their own in front of the camera. “Confessions of a Serial Analysts” was filmed in their India office and the result was a fun, short film that resulted in thousands of video views and Facebook likes – and gave viewers insight into the world of LatentView Analytics.

Best Connection to Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook Audience: New Media Strategies

Campaign: Engaging the casual wine buyer: The Wine Bar Facebook Community

Diageo Chateau & Estates needed help establishing a social presence for their Lifestyle Wines and attracting a younger demographic of wine drinkers.  After conducting thorough research of the audience, their behaviors, likes and wants, as well as of the competition, New Media Strategies strategically created an editorial calendar which focused on easily digestible and visual content and launched a new Facebook page to reach this audience. The Wine Bar Facebook page quickly became an online wine community that boasts a fan base of 31,000+ with extremely high interaction outpacing the competition

We Can’t Believe That Worked!:New Media Strategies

Campaign: ACCCE “Click-to-Call” Grassroots Advocacy

ACCCE, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, wanted rally online advocates to take offline action, increase the level of activism and increase online visibility in search and social.  In order to do so, New Media Strategies, needed to identify a way to do so quickly and easily, and motivate “an army of grassroots supporters into a quantifiable result.”  Using a two-fold approach, educate and activate, NMS developed a first-of-its-kind, a click-to-call campaign using Twitter, owned email lists and Facebook to connect local supporters directly to their  state senators.  With 3,300 calls and 41 hours of constituent-to-congressional-office talk time and promoted tweets, ACCCE saw a ~153 percent increase in followers. Furthermore, Twitter and Google used this campaign to create platform case studies, highlighting the success of this campaign as a first-of-its-kind in the advocacy space.

Best Use of Social Listening for Campaign Planning: General Electric

Campaign: HealthyShare: Surprise & Delight

Looking to strengthen the public’s association of health and health-related subjects with the General Electric brand, GE developed a campaign that would allow them to have meaningful conversations about health, engage audiences that were interested in such subjects and grow brand enthusiasm.  By using a refined list of Twitter search terms and carefully listening to conversations taking place on Twitter, GE was able to identify a strong audience base to target, establish trust and share healthy gifts that helped generated earned media and new brand advocates.

Best Visual Campaign through Pinterest or Instagram: Fathom

ConsumerCrafts Back-to-School Crafter’s Challenge

It’s no surprise that the use of visual content is a necessity for ConsumerCrafts, an online craft store that sells affordable arts & craft supplies for jewelry making, scrapbooking, kid’s crafts and more.  So in order to increase Pinterest followers and pins, Fathom and ConsumerCrafts developed a contest that invited users to submit photos of creative kid’s craft projects using back-to-school items.  The winning entry was simply determined by the highest number of repins.  ConsumerCrafts saw a significant increase of blog and website referral traffic, engagement from bloggers promoting the contest, hundreds of repins and was able to identify new followers, as well.

Best Use of an Infographic: Cisco Systems

Campaign: The Internet of Things

Armed with the understanding that there are more devices tapping into the Internet than people on Earth to use them, Cisco set out to bring awareness that connections to the Internet go way beyond the obvious – computers, tablets and phones – and explain the impact this has on business.  Furthermore, Cisco sought to drive positive conversation around their brand and its role in bringing the network into its current, impressive state.  By creating an infographic and thoughtful messaging to support it, and then promoting it through multiple channels, Cisco’s campaign, “The Internet of Things,” was a huge success.  In fact, Cisco noticed a 30% increase in quantity of conversation and a 7% increase in sentiment; 100MM+ impressions, impressive media pick up and significant social conversation and tweets by thousands, including industry influencers.

Best Global Communications Campaign: Tourico Holidays, Inc

Campaign: Best Hotel Promotion Combined with a Worthy Cause!

In an effort to increase revenue during a one-month global promotion and also raise $40,000 for Give Kids the World Village, Tourico Holidays had to get creative.  By engaging contracted hotels and creating a system that encourages small donations, a match program, along with promotion of the campaign through email, social media, at events and on their website, Tourico was able to increase the number of bookings by 93% and increase revenue by an impressive $685,000.  Before all of the check-ins even occurred, they were able to donate the $40,000 to Give the Kids the World Village and hope to triple that once all hotel check-ins are made.

Best Integrated Campaign on a Shoestring Budget: Gutterglove

Campaign: Gutterglove Brings China Manufacturing Back to California

Gutterglove wanted to bring awareness to the fact that bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. would improve the American economy and began to create the content to do so.  With just $3,000 to spend, Gutterglove was forced to think outside the box.  One of their employees, John Quincy Adams IV, was the descendant of our former presidents and leveraged this fact and incorporated it into messaging to spark additional interest in their story. That, along with a website dedicated to promoting the cause, helped Gutterglove see huge earned media success across broadcast, print and social media.

Best Piece of Branded Content: CSC

Campaign: Connected Consumer

With a new, major Leading Edge Forum (LEF) report, “Connected Consumer and the Future of Financial Services” in hand, CSC wanted to put this piece of content to work to stimulate conversation among the media, analysts and clients, enhance their reputation, promote themselves as thought leaders and generate leads.  By executing a thorough, targeted, multi-channel campaign that considered internal and external stakeholders and influencers, CSC’s campaign was able to do so. By implementing a number of tactics – including live-tweeting of a panel discussion, relevant, third-party blog posts, town halls, dedicated sales tools and more, CSC secured coverage in major financial services outlets,  received enthusiastic feedback from analysts,  garnered more than 40,000 Twitter impressions in just over a week and generated hundreds of leads through downloading of the report.

We were inspired (and a bit awed) by these winning entries, and the runners up.   Our congratulations to the winning entrants, and our hearty thanks to our judges:

• Deirdre Breakenridge (@dbreakenridge)
• Tim Moore (@TimMoore)
• Joe Pulizzi (@JuntaJoe)
• Michael Sebastian (@MSebastian)
• Tim Washer (@TimWasher)

And thanks also to YOU, our readers who cast their votes to determine the final winners!