Several years ago tech journalist Tom Foremski famously proclaimed, “Every company is a media company,” and since then a lot of organizations have reaped the benefit of creating content that inspires, informs, and entertains. One of those is “The Angle,” a magazine published online by W Hotels, a trendy brand in the Starwood Group that attracts young, affluent guests. 

For its demonstration of how a brand can be entertaining as well as informative, W Hotels has earned first place in the “Website” category of PR Daily’s 2016 Content Marketing Awards.

“The Angle” aims to align the W Hotels brand with topics its demographic is passionate about, such as design, fashion, and music—labels that sound like sections of a lifestyle magazine. It wanted to be viewed as an authority on those topics, which would increase brand awareness and lead to more business. 

“The Angle” produces at least 10 new pieces of content each month, including music and interviews recorded at W Sound Suites (private music studios and writer’s rooms in some W hotels). Cocktail recipes, features about chefs, coverage of parties at (and near) W Hotels—these are the kinds of stories being read (and videos watched) by an audience of about 50,000 since its launch in April 2016. 

The site itself is bright and lively, and the content created with laser-like focus on the target audience. 

Congratulations on their success to Suzanne Cohen, Danielle Wieder, Catherine Flexnor, Brad Wulff, Alyssa Kiefer, Camilla Johansson—and Sweden Unlimited.

Virgin Atlantic Airways received the 2012 PR Daily Award for Best Corporate PR Team because they don’t see themselves strictly as a “PR team.”

“We’re not just a PR team at the North America headquarters,” says Nadia Basil, who submitted the entry. “We’re the full communications model, working together on consumer PR, corporate PR, events and social media.”

Basil says the team’s goal is to grow a profitable airline, where people love to fly and where people love to work. The new PR model has given the team the ability to work on some creative projects.

“The key to our success as a full-service team is that we do so much more than PR,” Basil says. “Working as the full corporate communications model, we use social media channels to further our messaging and gain media interest.”

Here are a few examples of team projects, according to Basil:

• “Red Hot Reporter”: Using Twitter and Facebook to raise the airline’s profile and create PR for the brand, the contest promoted awareness of Virgin Atlantic’s sponsorship of the NFL U.K. game.
• “Flair in the Air”: This feature appeared on the front page of The Washington Post’s travel section and WashingtonPost.com. It was a direct result of pitching a “cabin crew training day” to a travel editor.
• Holiday Wrapping Campaign: Virgin Atlantic offered gift wrapping post-security to passengers traveling with gifts.
• Announcing new economy food service: When issuing the press release, Virgin Atlantic delivered the onboard afternoon tea box with a voucher to visit the Tea & Sympathy store. For employees, they used some expats in the office to teach their American colleagues about how to make the best cup of tea to eat with your afternoon scone. 

The team has set goals for itself in 2012. Basil tells us about four:

• Drive awareness around its new Upper Class service: Garner 15 million media impressions around the launch of its new Upper Class service in quarters two and three.
• Drive awareness to its new route in Vancouver: Garner 2 million media impressions from the launch of the new Vancouver service in May.
• Share local best practices: Track success against their plans monthly, including highlights of proactive activity, reactive issues, media contact and upcoming activity.
• Understand the perception of media targets: Audit the top 10 media markets each year, so that the team can see the impact of its work.

We congratulate the team that collaborated on the winning effort: Sarah McIntyre, manager; Michael Ettlemyer, program manager; Laura Kilroy, events; and Nadia Basil, coordinator.

It’s hard to fathom suffering a head or spinal injury in the abstract. In reality, it must be terrifying, and given such exceedingly trying circumstances, it would certainly be all the more difficult to grasp the intricacies of such an injury.

Healing, though, must start with some understanding of the therapeutic processes and objectives. To that end, Shepherd Center in Atlanta put together a video series to give the injured and their families and other caregivers digestible information about what has happened, what’s possible and what’s required. Above all, though, the series aims to give them hope.

For its sterling efforts, Shepherd Center wins top honors in the Content Marketing/Brand Journalism category in Ragan’s 2012 PR Daily Awards.

There are many reasons for the laurels awarded this tandem video series; here are a few:

• A concerted effort: Shepherd partnered with the American Trauma Society, the Brain Injury Association of America, the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, and the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation. On-camera and voice-over contributions came from an array of experts.
• Ease of access: The videos, offered online (see below) and as free DVDs, are in short segments so the intended audience can assimilate the content.
• Establishing expertise: From a pragmatic standpoint, content marketing is marketing, and the cornerstone of that is assuming a position of authority—and delivering. Done, and done.  

The success of the videos from a marketing standpoint is easy to see: 5,000 videos in each category—traumatic head injury and spinal cord injury—were ordered and the stockpile was depleted within four months. There are no metrics for the success on the personal level of those who watched them, learned from them, gained strength from them.

We offer our congratulations to Larry Bowie, Shepherd Center’s director of public relations and marketing, and to all those who had a hand in this video series.

To view the video on spinal cord injury, click here; to view the video on traumatic brain injury, click here.

The social and mobile technology organization if(we) wanted to market the launch of its new dating app, THE ONE, designed for black millennials. Their first step was hiring Blavity, a top media brand already popular with the target audience. The video Blavity produced to launch the app was so successful that it’s taken first place in the “Video” category of PR Daily’s 2016 Content Marketing Awards

If(we) wanted to build awareness of the app and spark conversations among black millennials. Blavity knew just how to do that: By looking at the experience of going out on a first date. The resulting video is a joy to watch—not just the unfolding tale of the date, but the overlays of tweets and memes which narrate the cringe-worthy and heartwarming moments between the couple. 

Blavity hired writer and director Xavier Burgin to direct the video and Khadi Don and Richie Loco, two talented entertainers with large followings to star in it. To guide people to the video, Blavity used social channels such as Instagram, which led people to Facebook—where the video was ultimately watched over 1 million times in nine days. 

Blavity’s monitoring of conversations around the video showed that audiences loved it, finding it refreshing and funny. Among the comments were requests for a follow-up video or even a series. 

The hashtag #BlackTwitterDate performed well, too. Over the 28-day course of the campaign, the video earned 6.6 million organic impressions. 

Congratulations to Blavity’s Aaron Samuels, Marissa Wilson, Christine Cauthen, Sankara Sauvignon, Lisa Atia, Morgan DeBaun, Sabine Quetant and Jonathan Jackson.

Michigan-based organizations supporting the auto industry have an employee pipeline to fill, but they face an exodus of talented workers attracted to tech companies and startups located outside the state. One of these auto suppliers, Yazaki North America, took on the challenge, and its efforts have won it first place in the “User-Generated Content” category of PR Daily’s 2016 Content Marketing Awards.

Yazaki North America created a social media-based employer branding effort that let its interns—drawn from local universities—share their internship experiences alongside the hashtag #internYazaki as brand ambassadors. The range of content these stories created sparked surprisingly high social media interest. 

Some interns shared photos of themselves with executives or from testing facilities. While others shared insights into their daily activities as interns. The common thread was their newfound interest in one of the country’s oldest and technologically advanced industries. Over the summer #InternYazaki hashtag appeared on Twitter and Instagram over 1,300 times, with each post highlighting a dimension of being a Yazaki intern and being the future of automotive.

Before long, the movement took root on Snapchat, as interns participated in a takeover of Yazaki’s official account—an increasingly popular use of Snapchat by companies—to give viewers a behind the scenes look at their journey as they experience everything the auto industry has to offer. Each intern takeover produced an average of 50 new followers. 

The campaign peaked when several interns were invited to attend a conference where they provided live content and fresh-faced commentary for an automotive media publication. At the conference, which was mostly attended by automotive executives, the Yazaki interns quickly gathered attention spawning Q&A sessions about Millennials and their thoughts on recruiting, work culture, and the future of the automotive industry. 

Traffic to Yazaki’s website increased by 35 percent each month; the campaign generated 54,000 impressions and (more importantly) an increase in internship applications. 

Congratulations to the team behind the winner: Misty Matthews, Katelyn Davis and Samantha Roberts.

Many parks are in a state of decline. Coca-Cola wanted to do something to help restore those parks and reinforce its commitment to healthy, active living.

It teamed up with agency Allidura for its second annual “America is Your Park” campaign, which relied on the public to vote for their park to win the title of “America’s Favorite Park.” The top three vote-getting parks received $100,000, $50,000 and $25,000, respectively, to help restore a part of their parks.

For a campaign that relied on the participation of a busy and time-strapped public, it delivered. More than 13 million votes were cast, 38,000 park photos uploaded and more than 17,000 videos viewed online.

That effort won the honor of Best Community Relations Campaign in the 2012 PR Daily Awards.

This year, the campaign expanded the voting mechanism to include voting via LivePositively.com, “checking-in” via Facebook Places, and sharing photos on the campaign website.

Also giving it a big boost was actor Josh Duhamel, who voluntarily took to his Twitter and Facebook pages a dozen times.

“Thanks to my Tweeps & Facebook Family, #Minot, ND won a $100,000 grant from @CocaCola!”

Following his lead was TV talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, who encouraged her followers to vote for their favorite park.

We congratulate the team that collaborated on the winning effort: Danielle Dunne, strategic counsel; Edie Elkinson, media specialist; Lora Grassilli, media lead; Kathryn Ritzinger, team lead; Amy Schneiderman, team member; Kim Wise, team member; and Sarah Dearman, public affairs and communications at Coca-Cola.

Nissan’s goal was simple enough: Get people talking about and engaged with the redesigned 2016 Nissan Altima before its official launch. The results of its social media campaign were impressive—enough so to merit a first place prize in the “Social Media” category of PR Daily’s 2016 Content Marketing Awards.

The Altima was just one of many new automobile models competing for attention. Nissan, through its agency Zócalo Group, observed that car buffs love to share photos of new vehicles, especially when they’re among the first to spot the latest model in the wild. That understanding, gained by analyzing previous launches, led to the ALT 16 Challenge, which sought to leverage multiple “Now you see it, now you don’t” videos in social media. 

Each video brought the excitement of the Altima to life in a unique way, encouraging fans to answer questions ranging from how many times the 2016 Altima was shown during a video to capturing a screen shot of the vehicle when it flashed on screen. People could use their answers to enter a sweepstakes to win Nissan gear and cash prizes.

To add a live element to the campaign, Nissan hosted an event during a game at Nissan Stadium, where the NFL’s Tennessee Titans play. Fans could share a picture of an Altima on display at the stadium or on the in-stadium video screens. 

Across key social media channels, the campaign generated nearly 33 million impressions and more than 37,000 engagements. Videos were viewed nearly 4 million times, and Altima was mentioned in social conversations nearly 14 percent more than before the campaign began. And all of this happened before the vehicle was even available for sale!

Congratulations to Zócalo Group’s Scot Cottick, Rob Robinson, Andrea Wood, Rina Mallick, Madelyn Dow, Michelle Underwood, Patricia Jones, Minor LeBlond, Sarah Redman, David Heiser, Kat Hale, Pat McCarthy, Eric Sevick, Nicoletta Milito and Al Oakes.

Baseball’s iconic Opening Day has been watered down, with first games now spread out over three days in an effort by Major League Baseball to generate more TV revenue. Kingsford Charcoal, one of the biggest brands associated with backyard barbecues, responded by launching a campaign to “Take Back Opening Day.” The quality of the campaign has won Kingsford first place in the “Real-Time Content Marketing” category of PR Daily’s 2016 Content Marketing Awards.

Anchored by a petition and supported by Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench, the campaign pressured MLB to make Opening Day a single daytime event once again. To sweeten the offer, the company promoted its commitment to hosting Opening Day barbecues in all 15 cities where those first games will be played in 2017. 

The subtle goal of the campaign was to encourage grilling in April, when baseball season starts. To support the campaign, three versions of the song, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” were recorded, one reflecting anger, another disgust, and a third sadness (riding the coattails of the Pixar/Disney movie, Inside Out), each released as online videos. 

A media day featuring Bench was planned to coincide with the start of baseball season, generating coverage from top-tier outlets such as ESPN, Sports Illustrated, USA Today, The Sporting News, and more. The media coverage generated nearly 330 million impressions while social media impressions topped 52 million. The videos were viewed 41,000 times on YouTube, and more than 1,500 fans signed the petition. 

No word on whether Major League Baseball will bow to the pressure.

Congrats to Erica McCabe, Shannon McGovern, Derek Reinglass, Genna Scisci, Samantha Williams and Samantha Haertl for a home-run effort. 

For Diamond PR, its best client shines brighter than the Puerto Rican sun.

Its client, San Juan Marriott Resort & Stellaris Casino, won the 2012 PR Daily Award for Best Client of the Year.

The San Juan Marriott is the firm’s oldest client. Julian Cable-Treadwell, the director of marketing at the resort, plays a prominent role in what makes the relationship so special.

“There is rarely an idea, no matter how wacky, that Julian will say ‘no’ to,” says Robin Canfield, of Diamond PR. “The only questions that must be answered are, ‘Is it worth the money and effort?’ or ‘What’s the ROI?’”

Cable-Treadwell’s expectations are reasonable, but “also challenge the Diamond team to constantly up our game and stay at the cutting edge of public relations,” Canfield says.

Here are three “wacky” ideas that Cable-Treadwell said yes to:

• Vloggers in Paradise: The first-ever, industry-defining video-bloggers-only press trip challenged vloggers to make a video—however they chose—on-site in Puerto Rico in 48 hours. The only stipulation was that the videos needed to incorporate the resort. The San Juan Marriott hosted the six vloggers and created a custom video editing room in one of its meeting spaces. Once the films were edited, the event ended with a viewing party that the resort hosted for locals, hotel guests and visitors.
• Journalists in the Recession: Knowing there would be no immediate return, the San Juan Marriott hosted a group of currently unemployed freelance journalists to visit the resort and have fun. What was the ROI? They knew that the trip would cement strong and lasting relationships with the journalists. As expected, the journalists became employed and the articles on the Marriott flowed.
• Ellen DeGeneres’ 12 Days of Christmas Giveaways: Most clients would balk if their PR firm came to them with an opportunity that would cost upwards of 800 room nights. When an opportunity arose to be featured on “Ellen DeGeneres’ 12 Days of Giveaways,” instead of immediately turning down the opportunity because of the cost (an audience-wide vacation giveaway for more than 400 people), Cable-Treadwell asked, “What’s the return? How can we make it work?”

Congratulations, Diamond PR and the San Juan Marriot. Here’s hoping you two can celebrate 

Not many communicators would want to read yet another brochure from an intranet solutions provider. A lot of them, however, undoubtedly did read “Calling All Champions,” the print publication from Igloo Software, the Canada-based intranet company. And more will read it now, since it’s won first place in the “Print Publication” category of PR Daily’s 2016 Content Marketing Awards.

“Calling All Champions” isn’t about Igloo. Instead, it’s a guide to getting employees to engage with intranets—content any internal communicator or intranet manager can use, regardless of which platform powers their intranet. 

Interspersed among the tips (how to measure value, for example, and how to build sustained engagement) are profiles of intranet managers who are also Igloo customers. Aside from that, Igloo’s presence is limited primarily to display ads that look no different than they might if they had been purchased in a magazine. 

“Calling All Champions” is visually dynamic, with strong graphics and colors, and particularly impressive since it was produced entirely in-house. The publication was introduced at IABC’s 2016 World Conference, where Igloo was a lead sponsor. A digital copy is available for download from the Igloo site (where it also serves as a lead-generation tool). 

For producing a publication communicators will actually want to read, kudos to Igloo’s Katie Windley, Emma Herlick and Deanne Hamilton.

Most corporations do CSR. Very few do CSR for causes the very discussion of which borders on taboo. The Body Shop is one of those rare companies.

The Body Shop Canada’s 2011 campaign “Stop Sex Trafficking of Children and Young People” (SSTCYP) carries on exactly in the spirit and tradition of The Body Shop’s founder, Anita Roddick, who died in 2007.

Roddick in her too-short lifetime was a powerful voice speaking out on behalf of the weak and defenseless all over the world. Strategic Objectives, a PR agency in Toronto, conceived an imaginative “high-profile national public and media relations campaign that would educate Canadians from coast to coast” about sex trafficking of young people.

The Body Shop Canada and Strategic Objectives met all their measurable goals and fulfilled every one of their qualitative goals with their 2011 SSTCYP campaign, including:

• Bringing sex trafficking to the attention of the Canadian federal government.
• Securing goal-surpassing, positive branded media coverage for SSTCYP.
• Cementing The Body Shop’s reputation for taking on horrific but little-known abuses.
• Giving its target demographic important ethical reasons for supporting its products.
• Publicizing a film, “Playground,” that exposed the child sex industry in North America.
• Publicizing other little-known key facts about child sex trafficking.
• Creating an anti-sex-trafficking petition at every Body Shop Canada store for customers to sign; more than 570,000 Canadians signed these petitions calling for immediate action.
• Doing all this (and much more) on a very modest budget in the tens of thousands.

Both company and agency show how far cause dollars can be stretched by ingenuity and imagination in the service of the ultimate forgotten cause, and for this they earn the 2012 PR Daily Award for Best Cause-Related Marketing. The company has brought light and hope to thousands of cruelly abused children, and has put the public deep in its debt.

Candor’s “makeOKbetter” initiative had a simple goal: Get the Oklahoma state legislature to reverse its plan to cut 25 percent from the state Medicare budget. The PR and business consulting firm succeeded—and also won first place in the “Interactive Storytelling” category of PR Daily’s 2016 Content Marketing Awards.

Candor’s client, the Oklahoma Hospital Association, wanted to make sure Oklahomans understood the stakes—and to pressure the legislature to ensure that health care was adequately funded. Candor employed a three-phase approach: educate and inform; an emotional appeal; and a call to action. 

The campaign adopted the PESO model—paid, earned, social, and owned media. It was anchored by a dedicated website that delivered pertinent information and encouraged visitors to sign up for email updates, contact their local representatives, and join the movement. The site also housed videos.

But it did not exist in a vacuum. The campaign featured posters and other collateral for hospitals, as well as a Facebook page where videos were converted into social ads. 

Media outreach drew the public’s attention, as did infographics and other content. Ultimately the campaign delivered the results desired: The legislature backed off the proposed cut. 

Today, the campaign continues as a rallying point for Oklahomans seeking a more permanent resolution to the healthcare crisis. 

For incorporating interactivity into a thorough media strategy, congrats to Karen Wicker, Ally Glavas, Larisha Hunter and Alex Joseph.

The PESO Model© was created by Spin Sucks

Persuading reporters to cover a story is difficult enough for public relations professionals, never mind when they’re pitching a story about the agency for which they work—during the holiday season.  

Such a thing might sound impossible, but digital communications agency Horn Group showed it can be done. It just requires a fresh approach. 

Last November, in an effort to show off its personality, Horn Group launched a campaign called Tech the Halls, in which it partnered with startup Turntable.fm to pit reporters from 14 media outlets against each other in an online DJ contest that would raise money for nonprofit One Laptop Per Child (OLPC).

Neither OLPC nor Turntable.fm is a client of Horn Group.

The result: $10,000 raised—enough for 50 laptops for students with disabilities—and coverage in major publications (beyond PR trades) as well exposure on social media that led to an explosion in the number of visits to Horn Group’s website.

For the ambitious and original campaign, not to mention the results it reaped for One Laptop Per Child, Horn Group earned top honors in the 2012 PR Daily Awards Best Branding Campaign category.

We congratulate Horn Group marketing manager John Lee, along with vice president of creative strategy Michael Mancuso and lead designer Paddy Driscoll for their work on the Tech the Halls campaign.

Aside from their time, the campaign cost Horn Group $0. The $10,000 it raised for OLPC, meanwhile, came through crowdsourcing. Horn Group built a custom landing page where people could contribute with just a few clicks. Fundraising lasted one month, the grand finale of which took place on Dec. 16 when the media outlets—including Advertising Age, All Things D, Fast Company, Forbes, TechCrunch and others—squared off. The winner of the contest was TechCrunch, but thanks to all of the exposure and money raised, Horn Group (and OLPC) came out victorious.

To view the winning work, please click here.

Far too few infographics—even well designed ones—adhere to the principle of visually displaying quantitative information. But the “Startup Unicorns” infographic Pulp PR created for ROKO Labs bucked the trend. For doing that, Pulp PR has won first place in the “Infographics” category in PR Daily’s 2016 Content Marketing Awards.

ROKO Labs helps app creators build better apps. Because startups often need to deploy apps, ROKO wanted to attract young, growing organizations. The Pulp PR infographic focused on “unicorns”—startups valued at $1 billion, along with “unicorn hunters” (investors who have funded unicorns).

The infographic uses a bubble-chart approach that reveals the relative size of unicorn hunters’ investments.  The real genius of the infographic, though, is the identification of future unicorns based on how much has been invested in them (both seed and Series A funding). 

Using a clever technique to connect investors (and prior unicorns they have funded) to new startups, the infographic quickly grabbed the attention of both startups and investment organizations, which amplified its impact despite the fact that they were neither Pulp PR nor ROKO Labs clients. 

The fact that this niche information reached 27,300 views, along with the design and utility of the graphic, was enough to earn Pulp PR the award. Congratulations!

You don’t have to know everything about options to appreciate the approach of Options Clearing Corporation’s 2011 annual report. Titled “Statements from a forward-looking company,” the report eschews “lofty predictions of what might happen in the future” and instead bases its case for growth on its performance during the previous year. Its cover shot of OCC’s Chicago office from street level, looking up toward a blue sky, reinforces its emphasis on stability and future goals. Full-page photos of five key members of OCC’s leadership team give the report a personal feel, along with brief statements by each officer on the corporation’s commitment to moving forward.

As might be expected, the report is packed with numbers, charts and photos, but the facts are laid out in a clear format that’s easy to take in whether the reader is giving it just a glance or a longer look. “Because we stand on solid ground, we can make some pretty impressive statements” is how the report’s “Message to the Membership” opens, and the eight-page letter looks at OCC’s past, present and future in clear, coherent prose. The financial data itself may be clearest to professionals, but its layout on the pages that follow the letter is uncomplicated and easy to peruse visually.

OCC’s senior PR specialist Angela Kotso, along with staff members Dawn Combs and Leisha Nicol, wanted to emphasize the nonprofit company’s secure foundation and the exceptional growth of the options market. The result is an attractive, informative report that allows OCC and its leaders to speak directly to a diverse audience of OCC’s member firms, partner banks, industry constituents and others.

We congratulate Angela Kotso and her team for taking top honors in the Annual Report (Print) category of the 2012 PR Daily Awards.

To view the winning work, please click here.