2012 Bulldog Digital/Social PR Awards Hall of Fame by Bulldog Reporter

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Best Use of Digital/Social in a Communications Campaign Grand Prize Awarded to Cisco Systems For Cisco’s the Network Cisco’s “The Network” was launched in June 2011 to fully embrace the communication strategy of brand journalism. Cisco shed the traditional corporate newsroom model, which only promoted news about a brand, to become a true newsroom of the future. By embracing the brand journalism communication strategy, The Network became a news portal that not only focuses on news about Cisco, but also reports on topics that interest a wider audience. The Network’s redesigned content was to be engaging, share-worthy and viral. Further, The Network was to become a standard for brand journalism for other corporations that hoped to revamp their newsrooms. The message behind The Network was for the relaunched newsroom to become a great online destination for the latest technology news and Cisco insights. Multimedia content, such as articles, infographics and videos posted under the topics of “Data Center,” “Core Networks,” “Video,” “Collaboration,” “Cisco Culture” and “Social Media,” to appeal to both an audience seeking Cisco information and to readers looking for more general technology or social media information. Cisco used multimedia content, including articles written by a team of media veterans for Forbes, Bloomberg and Business Insider, demo videos featuring Cisco solutions and infographics on cloud computing and other modern technology trends. Cisco spread awareness about The Network to its employees by promoting it on the internal Cisco employee homepage and on digital signage placed in the common area of the Cisco office buildings. To reach an external audience, Cisco ran ad campaigns on Mashable.com and social advertisements across Cisco’s 200 Twitter and Facebook pages. The newsroom also had an HTML widget box that enabled readers to grab the HTML code and place content from The Network directly onto their page. To further increase the sharing of the content, the “Take, Share, Engage” campaign was created to encourage people to literally

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

take the content from The Network for reposting—the only ask was to credit Cisco in the post. Within the first week of its launch, The Network’s landing page received 90K visits from 189 different countries. The Network currently receives more than 250K page views per month with each unique piece of content getting approximately 1,100 views. In addition, each piece of content averages over 200 Facebook “likes” and 1,000 tweets. The Network also received press mentions and accolades from renowned publications, such as Social Media Today, Ragan.com, PRWeek, Zdnet, Brian Solis and Splash Media. Best Use of Digital/Social in an Arts/Culture/Entertainment Campaign Gold Awarded to Deveney Communication For Deveney Quinceañero The year 2011 marked the 15th Anniversary of Deveney Communications. The transformation and growth experienced since the founding in 1996 has been significant, so the agency wanted to both celebrate its maturity as well as communicate to past, present and future clients its successes. In Latin American cultures, a Quinceañero or fifteenth birthday is celebrated differently than other years, as it marks the transition from childhood to adulthood. Deveney decided to play with this theme and host a Deveney Quinceañero to both have fun and leverage the celebration to raise awareness of the firm, its abilities and accomplishments. The guest list was diverse and included international, national and local government, nonprofit, corporate and web leaders. They ranged from traditional and conservative to progressive and liberal. Partners, colleagues and past employees made up the target audience as well. Deveney sought to create a promotion to capture attention and communicate the firm turning 15-yearsold. To get the word out, Deveney designed an HTML email invitation and web-based landing page that linked to an online RSVP system and orchestrated a Latininspired birthday party on the day of the anniversary. In order to stand out among the audience’s volumes of

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

mail, Deveney created an HTML email that would lead guests to a humorous Flash-based landing page hosted by the Deveney Communications website. The landing page opened with an illustration of the Faubourg Marigney neighborhood where the firm’s office resides and incorporated Latin themes and culture.

However, Hatfields & McCoys stood as the first scripted program to ever air on the network. HISTORY needed to speak to their current audience, but also bring in new viewers, while appealing to the entertainment community as the show served as a launching pad for future scripted fare.

Following a comical interlude featuring President John Deveney, the page directed viewers to an RSVP system and allowed them to update their contact information in the agency’s database. The invitation format showcased the firm’s creativity and skill at communicating core capabilities and generating name awareness.

Leveraging the big name stars and the miniseries’ highquality production value, HISTORY marketed the miniseries like a cinematic event through unique, high profile media placements. The idea was to create a “can’t miss” level of expectations for consumers by completely immersing them in Hatfields & McCoys promotions. A month-long social media and buzz-building campaign started in pre-production, utilizing the massive social networks of HISTORY and key talent.

More than 120 people attended the event despite inclement weather. The HTML email invitation gained positive awareness and recognition from the agency’s desired audience. The HTML email went to 3,318 invitees and garnered 2,840 HTML opens (85%), 1,000 clicks and 1,029 views. Best Use of Digital/Social in an Arts/Culture/Entertainment Campaign Silver Awarded to HISTORY For Hatfields & McCoys Lynn Gardner, SVP Publicity, Chris Meador, VP Marketing and Susan Levoli Director of Publicity HISTORY channel’s first foray into the scripted arena resulted in the Hatfields & McCoys and represented the latest stage in the network’s brand evolution. Since its re-brand, HISTORY has made strides to become a leader in all forms of programming, including scripted content. Hatfields & McCoys tells the tale of Devil Anse Hatfield (Kevin Costner) and Randall McCoy (Bill Paxton), close friends during the Civil War, who return to their neighboring homes in West Virginia and Kentucky to increasing tensions, misunderstandings and resentments that soon explode into all-out warfare. As the hostilities grow, friend, neighbors and outside forces join the fight, bringing the two states to the brink of another Civil War. With the arrival of the miniseries, HISTORY faced a brand communications challenge. Over the past two years, the channel had steadily increased in ratings with successful launches within the nonfiction and documental genres.

HISTORY decided to capitalize on the absence of the miniseries as a format—a storytelling device most networks had walked away from in recent years. Breathing new life into this genre, Hatfields & McCoys would distinctively position HISTORY as a new destination for scripted programming while continuing to broaden brand perceptions on a wider scale. While still in production, HISTORY pitched a wide range of electronic, print and online outlets to cover on-set in Romania. In addition, targeting a select list of recipients, HISTORY sent out one-of-a-kind teaser kits (Hatfields & McCoys bullet-riddled hats) to begin piquing interest about six weeks out from the premiere. Both iconic and on-brand, the distressed felt hats embodied the grit and bitter conflict notoriously associated with the legendary American feud. A press kit followed in the form of a family album of both Hatfields & McCoys, featuring rich details of each family separately. HISTORY secured cover placements on Parade, NY Post, Tribune and Hydrogen Magazine as well as coverage in Esquire, Entertainment Weekly, People, TV Guide, The Hollywood Reporter and Maxim. Further, the network tapped Rolling Stone’s audience with the music from the miniseries by showcasing Kevin Costner & Modern West (his rock/country band) through their RS Live Program, streaming at RollingStone.com. The HISTORY special was the most-watched, adsupported primetime television event and not just once, but three times. A total of 14.3 million people watched the third installment of the miniseries after the first two parts had picked up 13.9 million and 13.1 million

viewers, respectively. The day after the final installment, four different Hatfield & McCoy-related titles listed among the top “movers & shakers” on Amazon. Talent from the miniseries appeared in success stories in outlets such as “Extra,” “Access Hollywood,” “Entertainment Tonight” and WSJ.com. Most importantly, HISTORY successfully established itself as a reliable destination for premium-scripted programming, a trendsetter and leader among cable networks. Best Use of Digital/Social in an Arts/Culture/Entertainment Campaign Bronze Awarded to Weber Shandwick “Degree Men – Masters of Movement” The “Masters of Movement” campaign introduced and launched Motionsense and also sought to sustain growth across Degree Men’s other initiatives and programs. Weber Shandwick boarded to build awareness for the brand’s Degree Men Adrenaline Series with Motionsense technology. The technology becomes triggered by even the most sudden and slightest of body movements releasing extra protection throughout the day to fight sweat and odor before they start. However, the campaign needed to reinforce a “motion” message to convince users that Degree offers top protection. Weber Shandwick sought out digitally savvy men, 25-35, which have always been the target audience of Degree Men and its lifestyle outlet, The Adrenalist. The campaign’s strategy included inspiring and challenging guys to move like never before. Weber Shandwick set to reinforce the “motion” message and reach men through engaging content that brought to life the target’s favorite activities through extreme movement. To do this, Weber Shandwick developed a creative campaign idea, “The Masters of Movement,” a four-part video series that followed four athletes—“Masters” in their own sport and their journey to attempt a singular feat that truly highlighted their range of motion and the dedication and love of their sport that allows them to reach such heights. From the beginning of the strategic planning among the teams, Weber Shandwick advocated engagement and video completion over impressions delivery. Degree Men knew any true measure of success would be based on

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

how many people actually saw the films. Since each athlete’s video was, on average, over two-and-a-half minutes long, the team created a shorter, “super cut.” This Super Cut, 60 seconds in length, allowed digital media to ensure a high level of video view completions, while still delivering campaign messaging and simultaneously drawing attention to the other videos. Best Use of Digital in a B2B Technology Campaign Gold Awarded to Lois Paul and Partners For Freescale Semiconductor-Smart Mobile Device Pundits For several years, Lois Paul and Partners (LPP) had helped long-standing client Freescale Semiconductor break through the noise at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The technology space is ever changing. For example, personal technology has moved away from the headphone and CD players that debuted decades ago and even mobile phones that used to make up 61% of all mobile device shipments have made way for growth in smartphones and most recently, smartphones have begun to make way for tablets and e-readers. Through all of this change, Freescale has competed for mindshare with major chipmakers, such as Intel and NVIDIA, which provide the processors for many mobile devices. Lois Paul and Partners devised the “Smart Mobile Device Pundit” campaign to ensure original equipment manufacturers and investor audiences saw Freescale as an industry leader and help the company stand out. To build buzz around CES, the agency created a viral company for Freescale called the “Smart Mobile Device Pundits List,” which listed the most influential informants, analysts and bloggers who report on the latest in consumer device trends, reviews and news. Containing a who’s who among writers reporting on consumer electronics, the list provides the most impactful consumer industry reporters and bloggers a chance to receive the recognition they deserve. The media and bloggers who receive the most votes during the campaign receive the title of “Smart Mobile Device Pundit.” Freescale put a call out for nomination for the top 20 pundits. Once the nominations closed and more than

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

140 submissions had come in, Freescale and the top 20 pundits rallied their communities to vote for their favorite pundits via Freescale’s Facebook page. In the end, the campaign generated more than 7,000 votes and Freescale announced the Top 5 pundits, who received the “Top Smart Mobile Device Pundit” title, along with a branded logo they could display on their site and bio. For the past three years, the campaign occurred entirely online during or after CES to draw attention to the vast amount of coverage from the show and recognize the efforts of the tech industry’s front-line informants. The third consecutive year of the campaign happened in 2012 with a different structure from previous years and the changes generated significantly higher levels of engagement. Beginning with teaser social media posts on Jan. 3 and through Jan. 24, 2012, Freescale’s “Smart Mobile Device Pundit 2012” program created more than 140 nominations. From Jan. 24 to Feb. 8, engagement escalated thanks to increased word-of-mouth coming from the pundits who made the Top 20 List and encouraged their readers to vote. During this period, nearly 500 tweets about the program went out by users on Twitter, reaching more than eight million of their followers. On Facebook and Google+ several of the Top 20 pundits exchanged unique conversations and actively encouraged readers to vote for their favorite pundit. This increased overall awareness of the campaign and visibility of the Freescale brand. Over the course of a month (Jan. 3 to Feb. 8), Freescale gained more than 1,500 of the right followers across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ and also established new relationships with the most influential consumer and business press writers in the mobile space. Best Use of Digital in a B2B Technology Campaign Silver Awarded to Cisco Systems For Cisco’s the Network Cisco’s “The Network” was launched in June 2011 to fully embrace the communication strategy of brand journalism. Cisco shed the traditional corporate newsroom model, which only promoted news about a brand, to become a true newsroom of the future. By embracing the brand journalism communication

strategy, The Network became a news portal that not only focuses on news about Cisco, but also reports on topics that interest a wider audience. The Network’s redesigned content was to be engaging, share-worthy and viral. Further, The Network was to become a standard for brand journalism for other corporations that hoped to revamp their newsrooms. The message behind The Network was for the relaunched newsroom to become a great online destination for the latest technology news and Cisco insights. Multimedia content, such as articles, infographics and videos posted under the topics of “Data Center,” “Core Networks,” “Video,” “Collaboration,” “Cisco Culture” and “Social Media,” to appeal to both an audience seeking Cisco information and to readers looking for more general technology or social media information. Cisco used multimedia content, including articles written by a team of media veterans for Forbes, Bloomberg and Business Insider, demo videos featuring Cisco solutions and infographics on cloud computing and other modern technology trends. Cisco spread awareness about The Network to its employees by promoting it on the internal Cisco employee homepage and on digital signage placed in the common area of the Cisco office buildings. To reach an external audience, Cisco ran ad campaigns on Mashable.com and social advertisements across Cisco’s 200 Twitter and Facebook pages. The newsroom also had an HTML widget box that enabled readers to grab the HTML code and place content from The Network directly onto their page. To further increase the sharing of the content, the “Take, Share, Engage” campaign was created to encourage people to literally take the content from The Network for reposting—the only ask was to credit Cisco in the post. Within the first week of its launch, The Network’s landing page received 90K visits from 189 different countries. The Network currently receives more than 250K page views per month with each unique piece of content getting approximately 1,100 views. In addition, each piece of content averages over 200 Facebook “likes” and 1,000 tweets. The Network also received press mentions and accolades from renowned publications, such as Social Media Today, Ragan.com, PRWeek, Zdnet, Brian Solis and Splash Media.

Best Use of Digital in a B2B Technology Campaign Bronze Awarded to Kronos Incorporated For Time Well Spent Cartoon Caption Contest Kronoswanted to find a unique way to increase brand awareness and affinity and connect with employees, customers and prospects in an ongoing way. The company thought a cartoon would make for a great vehicle to embody their brand promise—workforce management does not have to be so hard—since cartoons often take complex ideas and make them simple and funny. The cartoon highlights specific issues and makes light of them, to show customers Kronos understands the issues they face and offers solutions to fix them. In September of 2009, Kronos launched “Time Well Spent.” In the last year, the cartoon received pick-up by HR.com, HR Bartender, TLNT.com and various HR publications in the United Kingdom and India. The cartoon releases weekly and posts on the website www.timewellspent.kronos.com. To increase engagement with customers, Kronos launched a caption contest in October 2011 at the Human Resource Executive Technology conference, which is an influential conference for vendors and customers in the human capital technology space. The contest announcement occurred on Monday, October 3, 2011 at the HR Tech Conference and ran for two weeks. When the caption portion of the contest ended, Kronos received 463 entries. During the month of October, the “Time Well Spent” blog received an increase in view. Before the contest, views to the blog averaged less than 1,000 per month, but during the contest increased to about 3,500. Since the contest, the “Time Well Spent” blog has an increased traffic and averages about 2,500 views a month. Best Blog for an Agency/Consultancy Gold Awarded to Havas PR For The Voice of Innovation Nation The blog at us.havaspr.com is a provocative, transparent

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

look at a midsize agency, a set of snapshots by, for and about the people reshaping the agency life and business. Started in late 2009 when Marian Salzman arrived to lead the agency (known at Euro RSCG Worldwide PR), the blog is a smartly designed showcase of the firm’s personality. Many of the opinions shared become cross-creations for Forbes.com, The Huffington Post, PRWeek, CNBC and other business and industry publications. The blog has replaced a lot of the headhunting fees, serving as a prospecting tool for new business and is a live marketing billboard and allows Havas PR to be the conversation. From interns to the CEO, everyone at Havas PR uses the blog to discuss innovations, share insights and start conversations. Content covers a wide variety of topics, but not so wide to take away from the main areas of focus as an agency—business-to-business, CSR, fashion, health and wellness, marketing, politics, PR, social media, technology, trends and youth. The blog posts help to inform the work of not only the authors, but also everyone in the agency, giving the entire group a forum for showcasing their expertise. Current events or recent industry news often inspire the blog’s posts. Additionally, staff members who write for the blog also post on Havas’ “Social Media & Social Trends” blog, launched based on the agency’s survey in 2009 about social media usage (managed for parent company Havas Worldwide). Over the past year, the blog has featured a dozen posts per month and since September 2012, one per business day. Page views total 4,000 per day (up from an average of 100 daily views). The blog provides insight into Havas’ readers’ interests (prospects and potential hires make up the majority of the audience) and the agency turns this insight into actionable new business development. In addition, the blog led Havas to be named by Sociagility in July 2012 as No. 3 among the world’s 23 largest public relations agencies for the effectiveness of its social media presence (up from No. 6 the previous year). The blog posts start the dialogue, which becomes conversation, spilling onto Facebook, Twitter and beyond.

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

Best Blog (Company/Organization) Gold Awarded to JRain For Walmart Green Room As the largest retailer, the world has high expectations of Walmart. Since 2005, the company has worked to build a more sustainable organization and create change globally—weaving sustainability into its supply chain, products, associates’ lives and the communities they serve and source from. The company announced ambitious goals to be supplied 100% by renewable energy, create zero waste and sell products that sustain people and the environment. Unfortunately, research showed that few Walmart shoppers actually knew about the good for Walmart does for the planet and deep green critics questions whether these ambitions goals could be reached and what type of progress was actually being made. The Walmart sustainability team decided in early 2012 to start a conversation. The company determined starting a forum would highlight Walmart’s knowledge of and commitment to sustainability issues, while reaching a broad audience, including sustainability influencers, media and general consumers. The result was “The Green Room” (www.walmartgreenroom.com), a blog created as the central hub of Walmart’s sustainability dialogue. In the first month alone, the site received nearly 23,000 unique visitors and to-date the blog has experienced a 614% increase in unique monthly visitors through crosspromotional efforts on Walmart’s various social media channels. “The Green Room” raised awareness for Walmart’s sustainability efforts, enhanced the company’s reputation as a sustainable business and gave detractors the most recent facts. The Walmart team used Green Room as another vehicle to communicate key events at Walmart and display its commitment to sustainability. For example, when Walmart introduced the “Great for You” icon, the company posted a preview video of the announcement’s live webcast. For Walmart’s Global Sustainability Milestone meeting in April, the blog featured a live feed as well as a follow-up posts summarizing the meeting and annual citizenship report highlights.

To hold readers’ interest, the Green Room team ensured a minimum of two to three posts per week by various contributors, including Walmart executives and thirdparty experts. The team included polls and visuals, such as infographics to invite readers to become more involved with the blog and increase the likelihood of return. Discussion-worthy posts continued, such as whether or not consumers are really willing to pay more to be green. In April 2012, the team worked closely with Walmart’s Facebook group to identify relevant opportunities to feature sustainability posts on Walmart’s Facebook page, which has more than 17 million “likes” to link back to Green Room content. With social media platform Pinterest gaining popularity, the Walmart team decided to use the tool to host a contest, “Pin to Win,” asking consumers to “pin” images showing how Walmart products inspire them to be green. Walmart stepped into new territory for the company by implementing the first Walmart Pinterest contest to raise awareness for “The Green Room” blog and engage Walmart’s primary consumer—Mom. Not only did the contest demonstrate Walmart’s ability to pioneer new social territories, but returned unprecedented results and helped achieve the goals of increasing traffic to “The Walmart Green Room” and increased awareness, engagement, and followers for the Walmart hub on Pinterest. In the first month alone, the blog saw nearly 23,000 unique visitors. Traffic received a boost from online coverage by mainstream media, such as Andy Revkin’s popular blog “Dot Earth” in The New York Times, Treehugger, Triple Pundit and EarthTechling. “The Walmart Green Room” featured 107 posts by 55 different authors, 13 of which were from outside of Walmart to provide third-party credibility to Walmart’s sustainability story. Best Blog (Company/Organization) Silver Awarded to Finn Partners For Making Michigan Healthier One Tweet At A Time “A Healthier Michigan,” (www.ahealthiermichigan.org) a health and wellness blog sponsored by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) came to life to encourage

Michiganders to live a healthy and active lifestyle. The blog provides resources to help residents make better wellness decisions, information on creating and sustaining nurturing communities and successful businesses and other valuable guidance on leading a healthy lifestyle. Michigan currently ranks as the fourth most obese state in the nation, so the blog came about for both members and non-members to address the need to educate Michigan residents on healthy lifestyle options and inspire sound living. One of the main objectives for “ A Healthier Michigan” is to build trusting relationships with Michiganders in advance of the 2014 health reform. Through AHealthierMichigan.org and its coordinating social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest), the blog engages with BCBSM customers and general consumers on health and wellness topics. This engagement creates a positive touchpoint for healthy members and non-members who may not otherwise regularly interact directly with the brand, and positions BCBSM as a thought leaders and resource in the health insurance industry and broader health and wellness topics. The site also serves as a channel to showcase great things happening throughout the state, including partner organization highlights, local events and wellness activities. With about 4,500 total visits at its start, the blog has grown tremendously to be the site it is today, reaching over 20,300 total visits in August of 2012. The writers for AHealthierMichigan.org come from various background and expertise in health-related topics. Example blog posts written by staff members include “The Benefits of Boxing,” “The Incredible, Edible Avocado” and “A Healthy Alternative to the Classic Wedge Salad.” As part of the ongoing goal to improve Michiganders lifestyle, AHealthierMichigan.org executed various health and wellness campaigns throughout the year. These campaigns helped boost engagement on the corresponding Twitter and Facebook pages, and increased traffic to the blog. Examples included “Detroit River Days Flash Mob” where a flash mob of hundreds of BCBSM employees danced in downtown Detroit to promote healthy living and community involvement and “Men’s Health Week,” which challenged the “Men of Michigan” to get healthy with seven days of blog posts and trivia in the hopes of encouraging Michiganders to

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

make healthier choices. The blog has grown rapidly throughout 2011 and 2012 in respect to consistent delivery, site traffic, site loyalty and online engagement on social channels. Regular blog contributors including external affairs staff and health and wellness experts provide content ideas on a weekly basis with the support of the site editors, the external affairs social media team and the external agency. The site received 11,300 views on its busiest day of 2012 (April 18, 2012) and an average of more than 558 views per day. In addition, the site surpassed its initial annual traffic goal of 30,000 visitors in the first quarter. Content averaged more than 2,000 visits per month from search engines and sentiment for the site on social channels continues to be consistently and overwhelmingly positive. Best Blog (Company/Organization) Bronze Awarded to Microsoft and Waggener Edstrom For Next at Microsoft Blog Microsoft is a worldwide technology leader with products spanning almost every category, reaching billions of people with a global research asset enabling the company to introduce market breakthroughs such as Kinect. However, plenty of media and consumers believed Microsoft wasn’t as creative or innovative as other large tech companies. The problem was Microsoft lacked a unified voice when it came to telling the stories behind these incredible technologies and sharing Microsoft’s vision with the world. This communications problem needed a dedicated platform to tell their stories. Microsoft wanted to open a window into the unseen part of the brand—a vibrant and diverse community of people passionate about technology. The company developed the “Next at Microsoft” blog as a platform for unique access to the people, places and groups driving cutting-edge technologies and initiative at Microsoft. The blog presented easy to digest stories and videos spotlighting the people, places and groups driving “What’s Next” at Microsoft. Further, the stories arrived in an authentic, humble and personable voice that engages readers and humanizes

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

the company. The content also connects the dots across Microsoft product groups, Microsoft Research, labs and incubation teams to provide the full view of how Microsoft envisions the future of technology. The “Next at Microsoft” blog launched in October of 2010, introducing Steve Clayton as the site’s editor and storyteller. In fiscal year 2012, Microsoft made moves to focus the blog on unique content. For example, the company invested resources into profile series, such as “People” and “Places Week” that spotlight the people and places behind the scenes. With the goal of “humanizing” Microsoft’s voice, the company looked for compelling stories outside of Microsoft that resonated with the blog’s core themes (such as Adidas’ wearable tech, Top Tech at CES and PSFK on Gaming). Through consistent, authentic and compelling posts, the “Next at Microsoft” audience grew in 2011 to averaging over 1 million page views per month with over 15 million page views during the July 2011 to August 2012 timeframe. Since launching “Next at Microsoft,” Clayton has become a recognized authority on Microsoft’s vision for the future of technology, trends and has participated in Microsoft and external events, including CES 2012, PSFK Conference NYC 2012 and the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2012. Microsoft’s CES “What’s Next” booth garnered a lot of pickup, especially considering the volume of tech news coming out of CES. Coverage in BBC, CNN, NPR, Spike TV and “NBC Nightly News” reached a total estimated audience of 38 million viewers/listeners, along with notable print/online pieces in the Seattle Times, Time.com, GeekWire, ConsumerReports.org and PSFK. The Syfy Network aired vignettes from the booth on the Future of Shopping, Fashion Tech and the Desk of the Future. Most notable, the booth directly led to a partnership with Bloomingdale’s at New York Fashion Week this past fall, helping Microsoft reach new audiences in unexpected places. In addition, “Next at Microsoft” led to a segment on CNN’s “Primetime” and brief post in Smithsonian Magazine.

Best Blog (Individual) Gold Awarded to MSR Communications For When Your Messaging is Ahead of the Media With a multitude of voices clamoring for attention in the discussion of “cloud computing,” MSR Communications and Bluewolf opted for a slightly different tactic to secure the consulting firm’s foothold in media coverage of the new technology landscape. Rather than focusing on a specific technology, MSR and Bluewolf discussed in holistic terms how success now depends not on technology, but rather on the interplay between technology, people and processes in order to gain maximum agility in an increasingly erratic business landscape. As much of this messaging was at the time brand new, many journalists were reluctant to delve into the human element of technology and instead opted to focus on cloud computing. In order to draw attention to client Bluewolf’s issues on its own terms, MSR determined a blog provided the best medium for its executives’ unfiltered thoughts on business agility in the 21st century. Computerworld’s “The Agile Business” blog, which MSR secured on behalf of Bluewolf and works closely with company principals to write, discusses in colorful terms the intersection between people, processes and technology. The blog’s topics range from outsourcing and iPads to customer service and social media and paint a picture of a new philosophy in which the IT is not a separate, siloed department, but rather a well-integrated part of the overall business. MSR works closely with executives on a bi-weekly basis to determine the most pressing issues and composes blogs addressing what CIOs think about while simultaneously shaping the discussion of what cloud computing, mobile, social and other new technologies really mean. “The Agile Business” blog continues to grow in readership with posts receiving more than 6,000 hits. Additionally, posts have been referenced in The New York Times, further solidifying the thought leadership of Bluewolf’s co-founders Eric Berridge and Michael Kirven.

Best Crisis Response Gold Awarded to American Airlines and Weber Shandwick For “Like This”: American Airlines Responds to Alec Baldwin On December 6, 2011, American Airlines crewmembers responded immediately to an incident involving celebrity actor Alec Baldwin. According to crew and passenger statements obtained afterward, the incident began when Baldwin was asked by a flight attendant to turn off his mobile phone in preparation for takeoff. At the time, Baldwin was playing the popular Scrabble-like game Words with Friends on his smartphone. After being asked to turn off his phone and refusing, Baldwin was removed from the flight, at which point he began tweeting to his thousands of fans and followers. Within a few minutes, 2,722 people re-tweeted his messages, reaching five million people in just a few minutes. American Airlines’ Social Media team convened immediately and developed a response plan that would acknowledge Baldwin’s experience and publicly offer to assist directly to avoid a confrontation, tell the American Airlines side of the story and ensure best practices were taken from the incident by the American Airlines Social Media team to enhance its existing social media issues management plan. In drafting its official statement, American sought to capitalize on the fact that Mr. Baldwin began his tirade through social media, and thus decided to explain what happened through social media as well. Key to executing the message was not including any names and carefully detailing the way in which events unfolded onboard the aircraft in a candid, objective and straightforward tone. American Airlines posted its official statement first on Facebook the morning of December 7, 2011. The Facebook message served as American’s official statement regarding the incident, explaining the nature of the confrontation and the steps taken by the flight crew to neutralize it. In a first for American, the Facebook statement served as the company’s primary media statement. As media calls were received throughout the day, reporters and

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

bloggers were directed to American’s Facebook page, which ultimately generated up to over 50 additional links back to the statement message. In total, the Facebook message reached 75,729 people, resulting in 6,534 likes and 1,261 shares. A tweet posted with a link to the Facebook post was re-tweeted 355 times. For its responsiveness, American received praise by thousands of social influencers and novices recognizing that celebrity does not always equate to “carte blanche” in the face of an FAA guideline. Within a week, social conversation about Alec Baldwin and American Airlines amounted to 27,230 posts reaching more than 38,000,000 people. Digitally/Socially Engaged Brand of the Year Gold Awarded to Weber Shandwick/MilkPEP For Breakfast Project Milk has been a part of family meals for generations. But with milk’s overall share of voice slowly eroding, defending its place on the breakfast table increased in importance. Weber Shandwick research found breakfast represented a hot topic for social network users—to the tune of 18 million conversations annually, including realtime reports on what they are eating and real angst when out of milk. To capitalize on this untapped opportunity, Weber Shandwick created the Milk Command Center, boosting the mainstay classic to the cutting edge of digital marketing. Every Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. Eastern Time, the agency’s social media experts monitored online breakfast conversations. A state-of-theart social listening center allowed them to efficiently identify and engage the most influential people “talking.” The digital and social media efforts worked as part of a larger, multi-channel campaign executed for the Milk Processor Education Program: The Breakfast Project, designed to spotlight milk’s essential role in the breakfast at home routine and help encourage increased consumption through compelling, cross-platform content. For the first time in its 17-year history, the National Milk Mustache “got milk” campaign changed its focus from a demographic-based approach to an occasion-based approach with an emphasis on defending milk’s place on

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

the breakfast table. The Breakfast Project efforts primarily targeted moms between the ages of 25-54 to reinforce that milk is their natural partner when it comes to nourishing and fueling their families for successful days. Weber Shandwick dove deeply into this audience by spending 10 days with 35 families from coast-to-coast via a private Facebook group, The Breakfast Club. Mom shared their views on milk, breakfast and getting their families off to a successful day as well as photos and videos providing an inside look at their morning routines. To support this new direction and harness the power of social media for milk, Weber Shandwick developed a real-time content marketing strategy and social listening approach designed to make milk a larger part of the online breakfast conversation, tell the breakfast at home with milk story through compelling content and use a combination of paid, earned and owned tactics to grow existing social communities and extend the reach of milk’s breakfast content digitally. Program measurement at the end of the first 90-day period showed The Breakfast Project efforts drove strong awareness and increased engagement with advocacy for milk messaging. During those first 90 days, there was a 26% increase in conversations about breakfast and milk on Twitter, while 91% of the total conversations were positive/neutral. In addition, the campaign reflected a 122% increase in Facebook “likes” and 28% increase in Twitter followers, while overall engagement with content across online properties reached 82%. Digitally/Socially Engaged Brand of the Year Silver Awarded to Airfoil For eBay Harnesses Social to Power Parents Pockets eBay is the world’s largest marketplace with more than 100 million members buying and selling through the platform. However, the company had a problem getting parents of young children to sell on the website. Consumer sellers represent a vital part of eBay’s business model, and parents are a segment of the consumer audience that has a large number of items around their home that could be sold.

Research suggests that parents specifically have an excess of items used for a short period of time (baby toys or clothing) and could easily be sold via eBay, helping them to fund anything from family trips to a new pair of jeans. But, the perception was that eBay was too difficult and time consuming to use and this posed a barrier for eBay to recruit this group of users. eBay turned to Airfoil Group’s digital and social team to shift this perception and help educate parents that selling on eBay is an easy way to empower themselves to make and save money. The agency sought to use three different channels to accomplish this—parent bloggers, web series and media coverage. The agency vetted 25 bloggers to determine their appropriateness for the program, identifying the best fits based on online content and extended community, affinity for eBay, region of residence and age of children. After identifying the proper bloggers, the team hosted an in-person event to onboard bloggers to ensure they were comfortable with eBay’s messaging and had the proper selling skills. Airfoil partnered with People Magazine to identify consumers who’d persevered through hardships with the help of eBay. The team identified three consumers who had changed their lives with eBay. They developed a web series around these success stories, distributing the videos via advertising and media channels to drive video views and expand knowledge of how eBay supports families. Articles and interviews appeared in more than 50 outlets, from national to hyper-local to parentingfocused, highlighting how parents and families could use eBay as a simple way to supplement their income and make money from items laying around their homes. Media coverage included publications such as Parents Magazine, The Associated Press, MSN Money, Chicago Herald and Knoxville Times, among others. Digitally/Socially Engaged Brand of the Year Bronze Awarded to Ogilvy Washington For Motivating Americans to Be One in a Million Hearts Heart disease and stroke are an epidemic in the United States. They represent the first and fourth leading

causes of death and the leading causes of disability. Americans suffer more than two million heart attacks and strokes each year. In response to this public health crisis, the Million Hearts initiative aimed to prevent one million heart attacks and strokes within five years. Unfortunately, many people do not know that heart attacks and strokes are preventable. The good news is that many of the major risk factors for heart disease and stroke, such as high blood pressure, smoking and obesity can be prevented and controlled. Americans are already inundated with health messages, which can be overwhelming in their calls for people to change everything from nutrition and physical activity routines to medication and doctor’s visits. How can one reach at-risk Americans with clear and actionable information about their heart health? The Million Hearts initiative needed to cut through the clutter and empower Americans to make healthy choices. Million Hearts sought to prevent heart disease and stroke through a multi-pronged approach that included improving quality of care, focusing clinical attention on the issue and by activating the public to lead a hearthealthy lifestyle. Social media offered a low-cost and direct way to activate and empower at-risk Americans with life-saving tools and messages. Million Hearts chose to distribute easily understandable and digestible messages surrounding heart disease and stroke risk reduction, utilizing media properties that the target audiences area already interacting with daily. Given the challenges and contexts in the heart health space uncovered during the research phase, Ogilvy Public Relations proposed stimulating audiences on Facebook and Twitter through daily engagement and launching a paid media campaign to amplify reach and engagement on the social media tools. The agency also suggested prioritizing access to easy-to-understand information by creating digital assets and leveraging existing and new partner relationships to maximize the reach of the initiative by collaborating online with other organizations (American Heart Association, Men’s Health Network and CVS) during national health observances. Ogilvy developed content calendars and managed the Million Hearts communities on Facebook and Twitter, writing 1-3 posts per day, seven days a week, which ensured consistent communication about heart attack and stroke prevention, promoting and reinforcing healthy

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

daily choices as well as signature activities, such as the online pledge. In addition, Ogilvy leveraged relevant partner relationships and digital assets, hosting live Twitter and Facebook chats around key public health observances (American Heart Month in February, High Blood Pressure Education/National Stroke Awareness Month in May, and Men’s Health Month in June). Million Hearts executive director Dr. Janet Wright published two posts in AARP The Magazine during the month of May. Following the female-focused outreach in May, Ogilvy implemented tailored tactics targeting men, including Facebook ads and hosting a Facebook chat on men’s health. Facebook fans increased by 29,883, while during the three-month campaign period, the Million Hearts account grew by 202%, more than surpassing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) average Facebook page growth rate of 10%. Page engagement on Facebook increased, as 4.8% of Facebook fans were recorded “talking about” the Million Hearts page and page contents. Twitter followers increased from 3,700 to 5,722, while 2,090 users participated in the two Twitter chats, including the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association and the United States Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin. The chats harnessed more than 21.7 million impressions and over 3,610 mentions. Digitally/Socially Engaged Brand of the Year Honorable Mention Awarded to Elizabeth Arden and Lippe Taylor For Revolutionizing Social Good: Elizabeth Arden #PinItToGiveIt After watching the rapid growth of Pinterest and participating in the social network for several months, public relations agency Lippe Taylor decided the tool could be a powerful one for brands, especially client Elizabeth Arden. With its ability to easily share imagery and visually bring products and brand personalities to life, combined with the viral nature of the repin function, the agency knew they had to quickly establish a presence for Elizabeth Arden on the social channel. The visual nature of the platform married with the robust imagery of the beauty industry offered a unique opportunity for a cosmetics

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

brand to connect with consumers in a more emotional way. As Lippe Taylor set out to launch Pinterest, they wanted to find a unique way to launch the channel. Simultaneously, they were working on promotions with Elizabeth Arden’s long-time charity partner—Look Good Feel Better—an amazing organization that helps cancer patients manage the visual side effects of treatment. They have helped over 800,000 women in the U.S. Elizabeth Arden has worked with them since the program started in 1988 and looked for new ways to contribute and draw attention to the work they do. The agency decided to move forward with a social good campaign and began examining the right channels to do so. Inspired by Pin It To Win It promotion, the agency took this concept a step further by creating a philanthropy initiative. The “Elizabeth Arden Pin It To Give It” program was born. Simplicity was the key, so the team created an easy call to action—simply repin—and Pinterest provides an easy barrier to entry. For every repin from the board, Elizabeth Arden donates eyeliner to longtime charity partner Look Good Feel Better, up to 10,000 pieces. Lippe Taylor soft-launched Elizabeth Arden’s Pinterest account in late May with a few product boards to establish best pinning practices. On June 27, the revolutionary social good program went live with the creation of the Pin It To Give It board. For the program to successfully launch Elizabeth Arden’s official Pinterest page and achieve the campaign’s main objectives, it was essential to create a 360-support plan, including hosting Twitter chats, posting announcements and regular content on Facebook and Twitter and establishing #PinItToGiveIt hashtag on Twitter to drive conversation. Traditional public relations tactics included securing an exclusive placement on Mashable.com, speaking opportunities and additional coverage in outlets such as The Huffington Post, AOL Impact, Examiner.com and Insider Beauty Buzz. Influencer outreach included working with retailers and celebrities to help promote the campaign and securing multiple tweets from celebrity partner Mariah Carey. The campaign garnered 101,191,748 media impressions, including an exclusive on Mashable.com that ran on the day of the campaign launch. Additional coverage occurred in AOL Impact, Examiner.com,

Digiday.com and Insider Beauty Buzz. Elizabeth Arden’s magazine partners and their beauty editors and social media teams tweeted and shared the program as well. Strategic speaking opportunities to discuss the program occurred at the Digiday Brand Conference and the Luxury Interactive Panel. Best Use of Digital/Social for a Food/Beverages/Restaurant Campaign Gold Awarded to CRT/tanaka For Vibrant Rioja Social Media Campaign CRT/tanaka and DOCa Rioja (Spain’s most prominent wine region) launched a comprehensive social media program targeting U.S. trade, consumers and media and industry influencers and wine consumers. The agency used key campaign messaging to frame Rioja as a producer of consistently superior wines with unparalleled quality, offering tremendous value, style diversity and food-friendliness. Campaign objectives included increasing the number of Facebook fans and engagement by 200% and growing Twitter following by 100%. Further, the campaign sought to grow social engagement by reaching 100 wine bloggers, media and influencers and 1,000 trade and consumers during a live streaming event. CRT/tanaka hosted and sponsored standalone social media events (Wine Bloggers Conference and Livestream event) and rewarded digital conversations and tasting notes on Rioja through social gaming platform. The overall social media program included filming a 30minute episode in Rioja, which was cross-promoted by two blog posts and live updates via Facebook and Twitter as well as sponsoring the 2011 Wine Bloggers Conference, enabling product sampling, engaging bloggers during “Meet the Sponsors” event, hosting three panel discussions and tasting events and developing a Rioja Wine Crawl with over 300 bloggers and by-the-glass specials. Facebook and Twitter played an important role as well, providing daily updates and “Like Gating,” which prompted Facebook users to “like” the client’s page in order to view wall content. Results included an increase in Facebook followed by

1,200%, an increase in Twitter following by 222% and engagement with over 300 bloggers, resulting in seven articles. The Livestream event reached 2,538 people from 10 countries, while shipments of Rioja wine increased by 12% in 2011 over the previous year. Best Use of Digital/Social for a Food/Beverages/Restaurant Campaign Silver Awarded to Zeno Group For Seattle’s Best Coffee Brews Up a Black Friday Deal with a Twist In 2010, Starbucks-owned Seattle’s Best Coffee unveiled a bold strategy for reinvention of the 40-year old brand—make premium coffee far more accessible and bring Seattle’s Best to places where premium coffee has not been available before. To achieve that mission, the coffee brand developed a new packaged coffee offering, the Level System. The Level System uses numbers and colors to show the strength of each roast, creating a far more simplified approach to help consumers find the perfect coffee to fit their taste profiles. In 2011, Seattle’s Best Coffee charged Zeno Group to make a splash about packaged coffee, driving trial and brand awareness to their new consumer target—the “hopeful striver.” The brand made a strategic decision to leverage Facebook as its primary earned, owned and paid marketing channel. The brand learned this target audience often works a second or part-time job in the service industry, making $35-$65K a year. In response, Zeno and Seattle’s Best launched a Black Friday deal with a twist—offering free coffee to those working the busiest shopping day of the year. Those working could log on to the Seattle’s Best Facebook page to claim their free pot of Levels coffee. Zeno identified the opportunity to appeal to a key segment of the target, retail workers, during the approaching holiday season. According to a 2010 article in the Christian Science Monitor, approximately 25 million people work retail jobs on Black Friday in 2009. This also proved a timely news hook—increased media attention was being placed on stores opening for Black Friday earlier than ever and Thanksgiving being cut short

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

for millions of retail workers. Zeno made the recommendation to create a mainstream, newsworthy program with a Facebook call to action. On Facebook, news fans were encouraged to “like” the page (current fans directed to the “Working Black Friday” tab), then choose from the following options relating to Black Friday: “Yes, I am working,” “No, I am not working” and “Share, I know someone who is.” To generate further buzz, Seattle’s Best hosted a Twitter party with Mom Central about Black Friday deals and tips. The topic struck a chord with the audience, resulting in the party’s customer hashtag becoming a trending topic for that hour. Further, Zeno leveraged the news trends of Black Friday deals, holiday workers and stores opening early with broadcast, print and online media. A special care package went to broadcast media in key markets at launch. The brand also leveraged relationships to drive awareness and spread the “Best of Black Friday” message, as Subway stores inside select Walmart locations distributed free coffee to shoppers and workers on Black Friday. More than 84,000 consumers claimed their free sample of Seattle’s Best Coffee, while nearly 50,000 consumers printed exclusive $2 off coupon with a 30% coupon redemption rate and sales increased at Walmart by 30%. The brand’s Facebook page secured more than 100,000 new “likes” and more than 500,000 consumers visited the Facebook application. Twitter conversations garnered more than 116 million impressions within two weeks. Coverage highlights included USA Today, regional CBS and NBC broadcast outlets, The Los Angeles Times, AOL.com and National Retail Federation’s “Smart Brief” newsletter. Overall, the campaign received more than 269 broadcast, 258 lifestyle-blog, 16 radio and 784 print and online stories.

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

Best Use of Digital/Social for a Food/Beverages/Restaurant Campaign Bronze Awarded to Weber Shandwick/MilkPEP For The Breakfast Project Milk has been a part of family meals for generations. But with milk’s overall share of voice slowly eroding, defending its place on the breakfast table increased in importance. Weber Shandwick research found breakfast represented a hot topic for social network users—to the tune of 18 million conversations annually, including realtime reports on what they are eating and real angst when out of milk. To capitalize on this untapped opportunity, Weber Shandwick created the Milk Command Center, boosting the mainstay classic to the cutting edge of digital marketing. Every Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. Eastern Time, the agency’s social media experts monitored online breakfast conversations. A state-of-theart social listening center allowed them to efficiently identify and engage the most influential people “talking.” The digital and social media efforts worked as part of a larger, multi-channel campaign executed for the Milk Processor Education Program: The Breakfast Project, designed to spotlight milk’s essential role in the breakfast at home routine and help encourage increased consumption through compelling, cross-platform content. For the first time in its 17-year history, the National Milk Mustache “got milk” campaign changed its focus from a demographic-based approach to an occasion-based approach with an emphasis on defending milk’s place on the breakfast table. The Breakfast Project efforts primarily targeted moms between the ages of 25-54 to reinforce that milk is their natural partner when it comes to nourishing and fueling their families for successful days. Weber Shandwick dove deeply into this audience by spending 10 days with 35 families from coast-to-coast via a private Facebook group, The Breakfast Club. Mom shared their views on milk, breakfast and getting their families off to a successful day as well as photos and videos providing an inside look at their morning routines. To support this new direction and harness the power of

social media for milk, Weber Shandwick developed a real-time content marketing strategy and social listening approach designed to make milk a larger part of the online breakfast conversation, tell the breakfast at home with milk story through compelling content and use a combination of paid, earned and owned tactics to grow existing social communities and extend the reach of milk’s breakfast content digitally. Program measurement at the end of the first 90-day period showed The Breakfast Project efforts drove strong awareness and increased engagement with advocacy for milk messaging. During those first 90 days, there was a 26% increase in conversations about breakfast and milk on Twitter, while 91% of the total conversations were positive/neutral. In addition, the campaign reflected a 122% increase in Facebook “likes” and 28% increase in Twitter followers, while overall engagement with content across online properties reached 82%. Best Organizational E-Newsletter, External Gold Awarded to Deveney Communication For Deveney Communiqué Deveney Communication’s “Communiqué” is not simply an email newsletter, but rather a love letter to their friends, colleagues and potential clients. The monthly communication piece features strategy, successes and sporadic sass. Created as an engaging way to stay in touch with industry peers and current clients, the newsletter also serves as a unique way for garnering potential new business opportunities. Links within each HTML email directs recipients to the newly updated Deveney Communication website, which highlights the agency’s practice areas, client list, capabilities and accomplishments. Delivered at the conclusion of each quarter, Communiqué provides a recap of firm activities within the past few months, including campaigns, team accomplishments, awards, client successes and expanded service capabilities. In addition, the firm’s location in New Orleans sets the company apart culturally, as the content provided exhibits strong

international and industry ties. The content for each email reflects three constant themes highlighting the success of campaigns, growth in capabilities, D.C. employee successes and new trends and technology. Each quarter, based on recent work and current environment, Deveney compiles content touching on the areas of “Innovate,” “Influence” and “Inspire.” These overall themes drive the content of Communiqué and the content influences the subject line. Communiqué content ranges from awards won to grand openings for clients and successes of clients to work with partner firms, such as Worldcom. The positioning of content to imagery reflects balance to ensure one or the other does not overpower readers. The newsletter offers at least a 30% email open rate, reaching 34% in September’s (2012) issue, a 60.01% for April’s issue and a 49.8% for July’s issue. Encouraging clients, peers and friends to click-through email links drove traffic to the D.C. website by at least 30%. Communiqué also maintains a 20% or less distribution unsubscribe rate, leaving the large majority of initial contacts still plugged in to the quarterly updates. Communiqué aided in expanding the agency’s contact database with new and updated contact information as well as showcasing HTML abilities. Since launching Communiqué, Deveney has designed and deployed several HTML emails for clients. Best Organizational E-Newsletter, External Silver Awarded to Spelman College For Spelman Connection Spelman College is a small, prestigious, highly selective, historically Black college that prepares women to change to world. Located in Atlanta, the college provides an education experience unlike any other, embracing a longlasting and life-changing commitment to academic rigor, career development, community involvement and positive social impact. In February 2003, the Spelman College Office of Communications launched a weekly internal newsletter, called the “Spelman Connection,” which went out to 2,600 faculty, staff and students at the College.

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

Featuring stories about students, faculty and state of the College, the newsletter provided this information to the campus constituency. Three years later, the College purchased an e-marketing tool, iContact, to expand its distribution to include alumnae, the board of trustees and friends of the College. In February 2012, the College surveyed its readers to find out what they wanted to see in the “Connection.” Content was pretty much on target, with the exception of alumnae wanting to see more about themselves. In response, the College used the “Spelman in the News” section to become a link that features alumnae stories. In September, they featured a new template and in October expanded distribution from 14,000 to 15,000. From January through June 2012, 27 issues of the “Spelman Connection” were produced and distributed, featuring 138 stories. Since January, the “Connection” has yielded an average of 16.1 percent open rate. Best Online Newsroom of the Year Gold Awarded to Synaptic Digital, a Definition 6 company For US Dept of State Online News Room Serving as the voice of U.S. policy abroad, the U.S. Department of State needed a dynamic media hub to engage with media, influencers and policy makers. With multiple press briefings daily domestically and emerging Public Affairs Offices in Western Europe and Asia Pacific, being able to quickly and efficiently handle content was of critical importance as well. Additionally, the U.S. Department of State needed to create an open environment allowing all site visitors the same level of access and engagement with the content. In late 2011, Synaptic Digital and the U.S. Department of State finalized the media distribution platform “State of Demand.” While Synaptic Digital hosts, manages and maintains the website to provide the end user a seamless experience from other U.S. Department of State run pages, the Department procured .gov URL for the platform to live on www.stateondemand.state.gov. Upon launch in late January, the U.S. Department of State conducted a soft launch focused mainly on internal

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

users and core constituencies to test-drive the platform. Once ready for primetime, the U.S. Department of State pushed users to the platform as the primary source for multimedia content surrounding the Department. The launch was well timed because on February 10, 2012, the U.S Department of State discovered and released satellite imagery of Syrian Military Artillery. Looking to quickly grab content for broadcast, online and print usage, media flooded the site. The U.S. Department of State’s Public Affairs officers also distributed the link for all incoming inquiries giving media direct access to the footage. The Syrian imagery received over 30,000 page views, while 30% of the traffic arrived via Facebook referrals and 9% via MSNBC.com. The story received 465 social shares as well. Best Online Newsroom of the Year Silver Awarded to Cisco Systems For Cisco’s the Network Cisco’s “The Network” was launched in June 2011 to fully embrace the communication strategy of brand journalism. Cisco shed the traditional corporate newsroom model, which only promoted news about a brand, to become a true newsroom of the future. By embracing the brand journalism communication strategy, The Network became a news portal that not only focuses on news about Cisco, but also reports on topics that interest a wider audience. The Network’s redesigned content was to be engaging, share-worthy and viral. Further, The Network was to become a standard for brand journalism for other corporations that hoped to revamp their newsrooms. The message behind The Network was for the relaunched newsroom to become a great online destination for the latest technology news and Cisco insights. Multimedia content, such as articles, infographics and videos posted under the topics of “Data Center,” “Core Networks,” “Video,” “Collaboration,” “Cisco Culture” and “Social Media,” to appeal to both an audience seeking Cisco information and to readers looking for more general technology or social media information.

Cisco used multimedia content, including articles written by a team of media veterans for Forbes, Bloomberg and Business Insider, demo videos featuring Cisco solutions and infographics on cloud computing and other modern technology trends. Cisco spread awareness about The Network to its employees by promoting it on the internal Cisco employee homepage and on digital signage placed in the common area of the Cisco office buildings. To reach an external audience, Cisco ran ad campaigns on Mashable.com and social advertisements across Cisco’s 200 Twitter and Facebook pages. The newsroom also had an HTML widget box that enabled readers to grab the HTML code and place content from The Network directly onto their page. To further increase the sharing of the content, the “Take, Share, Engage” campaign was created to encourage people to literally take the content from The Network for reposting—the only ask was to credit Cisco in the post. Within the first week of its launch, The Network’s landing page received 90K visits from 189 different countries. The Network currently receives more than 250K page views per month with each unique piece of content getting approximately 1,100 views. In addition, each piece of content averages over 200 Facebook “likes” and 1,000 tweets. The Network also received press mentions and accolades from renowned publications, such as Social Media Today, Ragan.com, PRWeek, Zdnet, Brian Solis and Splash Media. Best Online Newsroom of the Year Bronze Awarded to Strategic America For USS Iowa Online Newsroom In the spring of 2012, ownership of the USS IOWA transferred from the U.S. Navy to the nonprofit Pacific Battleship Center (PBC). This gave the PBC a unique opportunity to turn a historic battleship into an interactive museum. The World War II battleship, known as the Battleship of Presidents, over the years has hosted Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. The ship left San Francisco Bay for Los Angeles in May, docking at its permanent home near the World Cruise Center in the Port of Los Angeles. Strategic America (SA) collaborated with PBC starting in April to assist with the USS IOWA media, membership

and grand opening. Beginning with the hull cleaning and then the towing, immediate opportunities existed for worldwide interest and ongoing fascination over the next several months. As SA team members began working with the media on behalf of PBC, they realized the benefit a central, online location to store and share information would bring to media relations. The online newsroom provided significant, continuing updates, changes and announcements as well as historic and history-in-themaking photos. The site also represented a one-stop shop for the history timeline, videos, photos, news releases, information about events, veteran’s interviews and more. An online newsroom survey conducted by TEKGROUP found the following criteria were vital to journalists accessing online newsrooms: breaking news, search feature, PR direct contact information (email and phone) and links to a company’s social media sites. In addition, USS IOWA staff and volunteer media coordinators shared that the most frequent requests were for historic and current photos showing the progressive cleaning, painting and transporting of the battleship. The team also realized a successful newsroom needed a highly organized system in which users then feel they “intuitively” find what they are seeking. SA used all of this knowledge to create a resource-rich newsroom designed for reporters and others to find information quickly. The announcement of the online newsroom launch itself was coupled with a social media-style news release about the grand opening of the USS IOWA distributed to travel and tourism media throughout the world. This brought 800 visitors to the newsroom and 4,400 page views in the first three days. From the launch of the newsroom at the end of June to the end of July, the USS IOWA received more than 5,000 media mentions and clips in both traditional and electronic media. Coverage included multiple stories in Reuters, The Associated Press, Forbes, MSNBC, CBS News, NPR, USA Today, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Fox News and LA Times. Additional coverage appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Orange County Register, The Examiner, Miami Herald, NBC News and New York Daily News. Placements appeared in The Huffington Post, Fodor’s Travel Guides and the CBS, ABC and NBC affiliates throughout California and Iowa.

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

Best Online Newsroom of the Year) Honorable Mention Awarded to MWW For Nikon Pressroom MWW Group partnered with Nikon and Kanban (technical development) to create an innovative new online pressroom design for sharing information with media and company stakeholders. The objective was to provide a modern, clean and intuitive experience for the press industry. MWW sought to create a pressroom that gave media the right dynamics covering all the tools they would need to write their articles on Nikon products. This digital environment was created to be innovative and easy for the media to clearly gain access to the information they needed. MWW evaluated the current design and functionality of leading media and news sites to account for the best possible experience for users to interact with the Nikon Press Room. The agency explored engaging content experiences such as continuous page loading and focused on making the site more visually compelling. MWW endeavored to maximize flexibility to access, view and filter information. Tactically, this included an innovative interface that lets media and other users access press information faster and without the need to reload the page, one-click access to multi-format assets, a centralized content management system accessible by both Nikon and their partners, secure publishing and translation and localization capabilities across multiple sites and languages. Since the launch, the Nikon Press Room has been reinvigorated as a visually appealing, content rich page offering speed, flexibility and convenience for media and other users. The agency reached its objectives by providing a modern, clean and intuitive experience for the press industry. Best Digital/Social Word of Mouth Campaign Gold Awarded to Waggener Edstrom Worldwide For Tweet-a-Beer: Turning virtual contacts into personal connections, one frosty mug at a time

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

Attendees come to South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) to connect, learn about new interactive tools/models and make connections over drinks. When SXSWi attendees are your clients, getting noticed is the first hurdle you must clear. The five-day festival offers a packed schedule of keynote panels and workshops that feed the most information-hungry minds assembled anywhere at once. With the focus being interactive media, Waggener Edstrom desired to help attendees connect in a way that was practical, memorable and not necessarily confined to the event itself. The agency wanted to offer something more than another cool widget of the moment. Waggener tapped two talented outfits, creative agency tenfour and Twitter commerce-enabler Chirpify. By combining the talents of the two companies, “Tweet-aBeer” was born. The possibilities from personal connections found online provided the inspiration for Tweet-a-Beer. The Twitter application allows attendees to share admiration and appreciation with a click when you cannot clink glasses. At South by Southwest, attendees use Twitter as their personal live feed for organizing their activities and rallying followers for gatherings, providing the perfect proving ground. Almost immediately, the application turned into a success, sparking new friendships and renewing longtime relationships. With more than 100 unique stories, Waggener Edstrom received recognition as one of the companies bringing an innovative and compelling application to the masses at South by Southwest. Top media hits included CNN, Mashable.com, MSN Money and Bloomberg Businessweek. The campaign also put tenfour and Chirpify on the map, as short after the event, Chirpify received significant VC funding for the next phase of their business. Best Digital/Social Word of Mouth Campaign Silver Awarded to EvansHardy+Young, Inc For California Walnut Board “Natural Defenders” Twitter Activation In December 2011, EvansHardy+Young, Inc. created a social media mission for the California Walnut Board. Rather than just tweet about recipes, the agency sought to spread awareness for its campaign theme of “Natural

Defenders of the Human Body.” The only problem was money. Compared to branded and commodity board programs for other nuts, California Walnuts had a small social budget that did not account for social advertising and content creation, so the plan included recruiting influential people to get them to express “in their own words” a healthy message about the product. Taking into account the law of “participation inequality,” which states that only 1% of people in an online community create content, 9% edit content and 90% view it without contributing, EvansHardy+Young decided to recruit 1% of people who would help not only to create content, but influence the 90% the agency could not reach. Research suggested that if the 1% could be recruited via Twitter, they would spread the good word on blogs and offline. The firm looked for the 1% who met two criteria— had more than 1,000 engaged followers on Twitter and fit the advocate profile, which included popular food bloggers, loving moms, registered dietitians, aspiring health professionals or simply people interested in living healthfully. When these advocates tweeted about doing something naturally healthy, whether it was walking their daughter to school or cooking a meal at home, California Walnuts rewarded their positive action by offering to send them a free bag of nuts. After sending the walnuts, they waited for the law of reciprocity to work its magic and for new advocates to spread the good word about walnuts. The campaign started in mid-February and the response far exceeded expectations. Out of the total bags distributed, California Walnuts earned 76 endorsements in return and reached 179,576 followers with a positive message about the brand, which helped position walnuts as a natural defender of the human body. At the start of the campaign, California Walnuts had 1,474 followers and 2,134 advocates as of October—a 44.8% growth rate. The campaign received coverage in 27 blog posts and one recipient offered to host a California Walnuts giveaway on her popular food blog. Readers entered by posting a comment featuring their favorite way to enjoy walnuts. The giveaway generated 117 responses.

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

Best Digital/Social Word of Mouth Campaign Bronze Awarded to Elizabeth Arden and Lippe Taylor For Revolutionizing Social Good: Elizabeth Arden #PinItToGiveIt

For the program to successfully launch Elizabeth Arden’s official Pinterest page and achieve the campaign’s main objectives, it was essential to create a 360-support plan, including hosting Twitter chats, posting announcements and regular content on Facebook and Twitter and establishing #PinItToGiveIt hashtag on Twitter to drive conversation.

After watching the rapid growth of Pinterest and participating in the social network for several months, public relations agency Lippe Taylor decided the tool could be a powerful one for brands, especially client Elizabeth Arden.

Traditional public relations tactics included securing an exclusive placement on Mashable.com, speaking opportunities and additional coverage in outlets such as The Huffington Post, AOL Impact, Examiner.com and Insider Beauty Buzz. Influencer outreach included working with retailers and celebrities to help promote the campaign and securing multiple tweets from celebrity partner Mariah Carey.

With its ability to easily share imagery and visually bring products and brand personalities to life, combined with the viral nature of the repin function, the agency knew they had to quickly establish a presence for Elizabeth Arden on the social channel. The visual nature of the platform married with the robust imagery of the beauty industry offered a unique opportunity for a cosmetics brand to connect with consumers in a more emotional way. As Lippe Taylor set out to launch Pinterest, they wanted to find a unique way to launch the channel. Simultaneously, they were working on promotions with Elizabeth Arden’s long-time charity partner—Look Good Feel Better—an amazing organization that helps cancer patients manage the visual side effects of treatment. They have helped over 800,000 women in the U.S. Elizabeth Arden has worked with them since the program started in 1988 and looked for new ways to contribute and draw attention to the work they do. The agency decided to move forward with a social good campaign and began examining the right channels to do so. Inspired by Pin It To Win It promotion, the agency took this concept a step further by creating a philanthropy initiative. The “Elizabeth Arden Pin It To Give It” program was born. Simplicity was the key, so the team created an easy call to action—simply repin—and Pinterest provides an easy barrier to entry. For every repin from the board, Elizabeth Arden donates eyeliner to longtime charity partner Look Good Feel Better, up to 10,000 pieces. Lippe Taylor soft-launched Elizabeth Arden’s Pinterest account in late May with a few product boards to establish best pinning practices. On June 27, the revolutionary social good program went live with the creation of the Pin It To Give It board.

The campaign garnered 101,191,748 media impressions, including an exclusive on Mashable.com that ran on the day of the campaign launch. Additional coverage occurred in AOL Impact, Examiner.com, Digiday.com and Insider Beauty Buzz. Elizabeth Arden’s magazine partners and their beauty editors and social media teams tweeted and shared the program as well. Strategic speaking opportunities to discuss the program occurred at the Digiday Brand Conference and the Luxury Interactive Panel. Best Use of Digital/Social for Cause/Advocacy/Corporate Social Responsibility Gold Awarded to RF|Binder For Spreading the Gift of a Healthy Meal Founded in 1994 by practicing cardiac surgeons Dr. Peter Praeger and Dr. Eric Somberg, Dr. Praeger’s Sensible Foods makes all-natural frozen foods from veggie burgers to vegetable pancakes to products for kids that are low in saturated fat and cholesterol, contain no artificial flavorings or colors and are made with “ingredients you can recognize.” Committed to supporting causes that directly relate to healthy eating, the company sought a cause-related program for the 2011 holiday season that would align with their charitable objectives. With a small execution budget, RF Binder devised a digital holiday campaign to strengthen Dr. Praeger’s online community, increase brand loyalty and ultimately

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

add to the company’s fan base on Facebook and Twitter. The team decided that a program benefiting food banks in regional markets would be the best fitting campaign tactic for Dr. Praeger’s and determined a “1 dollar for 1 like” execution would be straightforward and easily understood by users.

Best Use of Digital/Social for Cause/Advocacy/Corporate Social Responsibility Silver Awarded to Deveney Communication For Inaugural Childhood Obesity Summit Social Media

RF Binder created the following core messaging for the campaign—“At Dr. Praeger’s, we believe that everyone deserves to have healthy food options. We have committed to donating $1 in product for every new Like on our Facebook page. Share our page with friends and help spread the gift of a healthy meal this holiday season.”

The Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA) hosted its Inaugural Building a Healthier Future Summit from November 29 to December 5, 2011 in Washington, D.C. In addition to developing the strategy and coordinating media relations efforts, Deveney Communications managed the Facebook and Twitter accounts of PHA throughout the duration of the Summit.

The campaign launched on December 15 and consisted of two main components. RF Binder encouraged Facebook users to “Like” Dr. Praeger’s Facebook page to donate $1 in product to the Food Bank for New York City. To create fan engagement, the team posted regular weekly polls allowing fans to vote for a local food bank out of 10 options pre-selected based on key markets for the brand. The top three food banks received $500 each and the remaining seven received a product donation from Dr. Praeger’s, so no food bank was left without a donation.

In November 2011, PHA hosted the Inaugural Building a Healthier Future Summit, which brought together private sector, government and nonprofit leaders to collaborate in the effort to end childhood obesity in America within a generation. Speakers included New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker and former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist as well as keynote speaker First Lady Michelle Obama.

RF Binder tagged food banks with a Facebook page and managed to get them engaged in the polls, encouraging their fans to vote for them, which further expanded the reach of the campaign and generated new Likes. The campaign received additional support from a $2,500 Facebook ad campaign and promotion via media and blogger outreach via the brand’s Twitter handle. In less than one week, Dr. Praeger’s Facebook page received over 3,000 new Likes, while in just one week, the number of people talking about Dr. Praeger’s on Facebook increased from 89 to 1,480. The charity program proved to be such a success that the end date extended to December 31, 2011, at which time Dr. Praeger’s delivered $1,500 worth of product to the Food Bank for NYC and donated $500 to each of the three top food banks in other regional markets, along with making product donations to the remaining seven from the poll. Dr. Praeger’s received a 5,807 increase in Facebook fans and an average of 1,886 people talking about Dr. Praeger’s, 3,535,00 ad campaign impressions.

Deveney orchestrated the Summit’s Facebook and Twitter accounts in order to generate a buzz of conversation throughout the weeks leading up to, during and after the event. The agency’s social media management created a variety of original content, including photos, links, statistics and quotes as well as responding to other users’ posts to foster conversations on both social media accounts. With the Summit approaching, published content on PHA’s social media channels centered on the Summit’s speakers, activities, press coverage and discussion topics. Deveney discovered the social media realm already simmering with discussions related to childhood obesity, healthy eating and different ways to encourage children to get active. PHA sought to leverage news surrounding the Summit to encourage and bolster these conversations via social media, aiming to generate solutions for the larger issue at hand. Deveney built a campaign to encompass both Facebook and Twitter, tailoring content to each platform. The agency also generated hashtags unique to the event, which were instrumental during evaluation as Deveney used them to track conversations. The second part of the campaign, included conducted live, timely postings throughout the actual Summit. The live posts covered

topics, such as presenters’ background and involvement, quotes and stats harvested from their presentations, awards given out and live coverage of the Great American Family Dinner Challenge. Deveney and PHA faced several challenges when initiating the social media effort, including distinguishing their brand identity as separate from Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” initiative. Publicizing the event showed how few people were aware of a private sector initiative against childhood obesity, let alone PHA itself. Social media efforts would have to promote, not only the Summit, but also PHA as an entity as well as their goals and mission. In addition, PHA wanted to keep social media conversations positive and upbeat, striving to find viable solutions to a disturbing national trend, rather than harping on the problem. PHA did not want to perpetuate discussions about “Fat America,” but rather how to collaborate as a national to find solutions to this ongoing problem. At the stare of the Summit, PHA’s Facebook page had 148 “Likes,” which increased to 282 likes. Throughout the seven-day period, content posted by PHA and other users discussing the Summit received 262 likes and 29 content shares on Facebook. Due to this participation and content sharing, posts by PHA reached more than 4,600 users. In addition, @PHAnews began the Summit with 1,320 followers and the number increased to 1,402 followers within a few short hours. Twitter posts by PHA and other users discussing the subject of childhood obesity were re-tweeted more than 250 times throughout the course of the Summit. PHA also made connections with several popular Twitter profiles belonging to organizations, businesses, individuals, celebrities and even politicians. This target is particularly important because they represent the gatekeepers to actual solutions to end childhood obesity. Some of the more notable connections included Walmart, Hyatt Hotels, The Food Network, YMCA and First Lady Michelle Obama. Through these social media platforms, Deveney fostered a positive dialogue between PHA and their target audiences throughout the first Building a Healthier Future Summit and beyond.

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

Best Use of Digital/Social for Cause/Advocacy/Corporate Social Responsibility Bronze Awarded to MassMutual Financial Group For MassMutual and Easter Seals Make the First Five Count Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual) is a 160-year-old plus financial services brand that ranks in the Fortune 500 and listed as one of the nine most admired life and health insurance companies in the world in the March 19, 2012 issue of Fortune. Consumers view the company as strong and stable, but with those attributes come an image of inflexibility and even distrust, especially after the recent economic instability. Despite the need to meet regulatory requirements, MassMutual launched a presence on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ and established ways to engage its community on a more human level. Based on positive community response MassMutual received from its recent TV ad, “Mother,” which depicts a day-in-the-life of a young mother and her son with special needs, the desire grew to link the SpecialCare Program more closely with the brand. In conjunction with its agency-of-record, Mullen, MassMutual developed a multi-faceted Facebook-centric program with tentacles that reached into traditional news media. The purpose of the initiative was to raise awareness of MassMutual’s long-standing partnership with Easter Seals and the services they both provide to families with special needs. To incentivize community participation and sharing, MassMutual pledged to donate $5 to Easter Seals’ “Make the First Five Count” program for every person who “liked” the campaign Facebook tab. In addition to underscoring the emotional and financial challenges these families face, the initiative aimed to highlight MassMutual’s unparalleled expertise in special needs planning, positioning the brand as a leader in both Community Social Responsibility and in the special needs market. Mullen designed the campaign to leverage MassMutual’s SpecialCare Program and long-standing relationship with Easter Seals to create a dedicated

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

Facebook tab experience, supported by engagement ads to raise awareness for an important cause, drive content shares, brand likes and overall fan engagement. MassMutual’s fan base grew by 14% throughout the campaign, resulting in more than 56,000 fans, while the company gained 7,618 new Facebook fans in six weeks and 5,000 tab “likes” in 37 days. Mullen garnered 124,923,810 impressions in leading consumer publications, including AOL Daily Finance, MediaPost, Parents.com, U.S. News & World Report and The Wall Street Journal. Best Use of Digital/Social for a Consumer Technology Campaign Gold Awarded to Sparkpr For Good Technology Finds Overtime Growing Good Technology, the leader in secure enterprise mobility, wanted to increase brand recognition for their secure mobile email and applications management and collaboration solutions. The company is well known in enterprise channels, however as smartphones and tablets grow in popularity for both work and personal use, there is a much broader audience unaware of the need for a mobile solution, which enables people to securely do their work on their own schedule. The company decided to sponsor a consumer survey illustrating the extent to which people’s work and personal life have blended, finding that in the morning, 68 percent of people check work email before 8 a.m. and 50 percent of people check while still in bed. Looking globally, the survey compared habits in the U.S. and UK and found 80 percent of people are still working after leaving the office in the U.S., versus 93 percent in the UK. Yet the British are less likely to think about work at the dinner table, with only 29 percent checking email during the meal, compared to 38 percent of Americans who have their phone sitting next to the silverware. The campaign goal was to increase brand recognition and visibility with new mainstream audiences by positioning Good Technology as a thought leader in mobile security. Working with Sparkpr, Good Technology worked with Ina Fried of AllThingsD, giving her an early look at the survey

results, placing an exclusive story with an outlet, which crossed business and tech audiences. The story kicked off coverage in coordination with the campaign’s press release, distributed for U.S. and UK audiences announcing the results. Sparkpr worked with OnePoll to help release the story on their wire service and in the U.S., utilized PR Newswire to send the release out, which included a MultiVu inclusion of the U.S. infographic and a link to a supporting video. The video also went out on YouTube and Vevo. Sparkpr also created a UK version customized with the results from Britain. The team followed up with email outreach to trade and consumer reporters. Lastly, a UK broadcast media tour with a spokesperson from Good Technology secured coverage on Bloomberg TV and regional outlets. The campaign made an enterprise topic meaningful to consumers by highlighting a cultural shift. This resulted in an invitation for executive John Herrema to speak at the Consumer Electronics Show. Stories appeared on CNN, NBC, Bloomberg TV, The Huffington Post, Fast Company, Mashable.com and TechCrunch, with more than 79 global broadcast mentions reaching three million views and 194 print stories. Online coverage reached 68.7 million people in the first week. The results showed how people have embraced mobile technology and the degree to which “work time” and “personal time” have blurred. Best Use of Digital/Social for a Consumer Technology Campaign Silver Awarded to Airfoil For eBay Harnesses Social to Power Parents Pockets eBay is the world’s largest marketplace with more than 100 million members buying and selling through the platform. However, the company had a problem getting parents of young children to sell on the website. Consumer sellers represent a vital part of eBay’s business model, and parents are a segment of the consumer audience that has a large number of items around their home that could be sold. Research suggests that parents specifically have an excess of items used for a short period of time (baby toys or clothing) and could easily be sold via eBay, helping them to fund anything from family trips to a new pair of jeans. But, the perception was that eBay was too difficult

and time consuming to use and this posed a barrier for eBay to recruit this group of users. eBay turned to Airfoil Group’s digital and social team to shift this perception and help educate parents that selling on eBay is an easy way to empower themselves to make and save money. The agency sought to use three different channels to accomplish this—parent bloggers, web series and media coverage. The agency vetted 25 bloggers to determine their appropriateness for the program, identifying the best fits based on online content and extended community, affinity for eBay, region of residence and age of children. After identifying the proper bloggers, the team hosted an in-person event to onboard bloggers to ensure they were comfortable with eBay’s messaging and had the proper selling skills. Airfoil partnered with People Magazine to identify consumers who’d persevered through hardships with the help of eBay. The team identified three consumers who had changed their lives with eBay. They developed a web series around these success stories, distributing the videos via advertising and media channels to drive video views and expand knowledge of how eBay supports families. Articles and interviews appeared in more than 50 outlets, from national to hyper-local to parentingfocused, highlighting how parents and families could use eBay as a simple way to supplement their income and make money from items laying around their homes. Media coverage included publications such as Parents Magazine, The Associated Press, MSN Money, Chicago Herald and Knoxville Times, among others. Best Use of Digital/Social for a Consumer Technology Campaign Bronze Awarded to RF|Binder For BAND-AID® brand brings bandage to life For generations, parents have relied on the iconic BANDAID Brand to heal their kids’ cuts and scrapes. This year, the brand sought to connect with parents and kids in a new, innovative way to transform those healing moments into moments of virtual fun. In partnership with Johnson & Johnson, Disney and JWT Advertising, RF Binder

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

spearheaded the launch of BAND-AID Brand’s first-ever augmented reality application, BAND-AID Brand Magic Vision App featuring Disney’s The Muppets, which brings a new element of fun to the healing process. The app engages kids in a magical experience where they can scan their Muppets bandages with iPhones or iPads and bring their favorite characters—Kermit, Miss Piggy, and Gonzo—to life in a variety of adventures. RF Binder’s job was to reinforce the brand’s equity and showcase how BAND-AID offers more than just a line of products with this new, virtual way for moms and kids to engage in the wound care space. With a low budget, short planning window, and launch date missing The Muppets Movie DVD release, RF Binder recognized many challenges faced the app launch. Given the brand’s low budget and only a one month lead time for the PR team to execute the plan, RF Binder developed a holistic strategy that could be executed on a short timeline, while still making a huge splash. The plan was largely based around the notion that crafting a visual story in the online digital space would spark a viral launch. The strategy included securing an exclusive toptier national story and leverage coverage to spark viral pick-up to spread buzz, leveraging multi-media platforms to showcase the app and creating a visual multimedia story to highlight the interactivity of the app within online and broadcast media. RF Binder came through on it strategy by securing an exclusive New York Times story on BAND-AID to kick-off the launch. The day the Times article hit, the agency distributed a multimedia press release and conducted an aggressive media outreach to over 500 contacts from a range of parenting, entertainment, lifestyle, marketing and technology outlets. In working with the Mom Central blogger network, RF Binder further amplified the campaign buzz among the key target audiences and secured influential mom bloggers to post reviews of the app and detail their brand experience to readers. Lastly, the team showcased the Magic Vision app at a variety of events to garner more awareness and drive trial among influential celebrity parents, political figures and key bloggers. Such events included BlogHer 2012, The Baby Buggy Bedtime Bash, Johnson & Johnson’s Annual Capitol Hill Day and “The Moms” celebrity blogger media event. Sparked by The New York Times article, RF Binder’s

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

campaign strategy drove tremendous awareness for the app and garnered a wide variety of media coverage that excited parents about the new way to bring fun to the healing process. PR efforts generated over 35 online stories in two days, including The New York Times exclusive. Coverage occurred in top technology outlets such as Mashable.com and Gizmodo.com, representing a first for the brand. Broadcast mentions reached over 200 stations nationwide, including CNN, New York 1, CW and Today in LA. Online and print stories landed across all targeted media genres, including The Chicago Tribune, Forbes, Ad Age, Business Insider, Parenting.com, People.com, Yahoo.com and MSN.com, among others. Due to the outreach, the Magic Vision App launch went viral in less than 48 hours.

Digital/Social Communications Campaign of the Year Gold Awarded to M Booth For Women Entrepreneurs are #PoweringTomorrow In March 2012, American Express OPEN released the “State of Women-Owned Business Report,” a proprietary research report uncovering the growth, impact and characteristics of today’s women business owner population via 2011 U.S. Census Report data. The report revealed that as of 2011, there were over 8.3 million women business owners in the United States, generating nearly $1.3 trillion in revenues and employing 7.7 million people. OPEN’s mission is to help small businesses do more business and one of the ongoing ways the brand does that is by arming small business owners with important and useful information. The State of the Women-Owned Business Report does just that for women business owners across the U.S., and the 76-page report received a wide breadth of national publicity and media coverage in 49 states. OPEN wanted to be sure the data and findings were easily accessible to and in the hands of women business owners and their networks, leveraging data to drive brand favorability and prove useful and inspiring information and content to the woman, business owner community. OPEN tapped the emotional story of being a woman

business owner by pulling powerful data points from the greater Woman-Owned Businesses Report to create compelling visual content. OPEN wrote the data points based on share-ability, spread-ability, what would best resonate, inspire and encourage sharing among women business owners and their networks. In addition to the infographics depicting specific data from the WomenOwned Business Report, agency M Booth identified and boarded 14 successful, socially active and relatable women business owners to display their personal success stories wit the use of visuals, adding the personal and emotional side to the story. M Booth identified targeted influencers, bloggers, content partners, women business owners and active social presences that reach woman business owners, across numerous verticals, to send the visual narrative. In addition, the 14 business owners featured in the campaign spread the word by sharing the infographics across their online and offline networks. For example, Rashmi Sinha, co-founder of SlideShare pushed out her personalized visual to the SlideShare network on SlideShare, via their email newsletter and across their social platforms, including Facebook and Twitter. Other spotlights included Robin Chase, founder & former CEO, Zipcar, Alisa Volkman, co-founder, Babble.com and Jen Hyman, founder & CEO, Rent the Runway. OPEN carefully selected an online media outlet— Mashable.com—with a highly engaging and large female (48%) audience as the content partner of the campaign to assist in driving the conversation with unique sponsored content, including round-ups, original editorial content and video interviews with influential female founders in tech, leading to nine unique content pieces. Mashable.com conducted a live video panel, bringing together three high profile women business owners in the tech space; Rachel Sklar, founder, Change the Ratio and TheLi.st, Angela Jia Kim, founder, Om Aroma and Savor the Success, and Kellee Khalil, founder and CEO, Lover.ly, moderated by Allison Silver, VP Brand, Advertising and Advocacy at OPEN. OPEN measured the campaign’s success by online and social engagement, specifically social interactions with the 22 visuals that made up the narrative. The goal at the outset of the campaign was to garner 100,000 social interactions (blog posts, likes, comments, tweets, re-

tweets, +1s, pins, video views), and by the end of the campaign 157,651 social interactions were accrued, 58% above goal. Online media outreach resulted in 147 placements on news and blog sites, resulting in 55,166 social interactions. An article generated for Mashable.com titled “10 Thing You Didn’t Know About Women-Owned Businesses” received 2,505 social shares and 10,472 page views. An article included in the content partnership entitled “44 Female Founders Every Entrepreneur Should Know” received 14,780 social interactions across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and StumbleUpon. Digital/Social Communications Campaign of the Year Silver Awarded to Backbone Media For Polartec Made Possible Campaign The “Made Possible” campaign came about as a way to reach a younger demographic of Polartec customers, while also giving back to collegiate outdoor programming—a philanthropic focus point for the brand. The success of the campaign far exceeded expectations in 2011 in terms of reach and engagement as well as overwhelming positive brand feedback. The brand decided to duplicate the campaign in 2012, receiving even greater results. During the first portion of the campaign, Polartec asked hundreds of collegiate outdoor programs across the country to submit a video telling the company what they would do with the winning $10,000 grant. Polartech then choose four finalists from the submissions to add to a Facebook voting application based on creativity. Finally, the videos made by each finalist went on a Facebook application for approximately 30 days and the number of votes for each video determined the winner. Students promoted their own videos and outdoor programs to win the grant. The winning school received a $10,000 grant, Polartec apparel for the entire club and a feature article in Backpacker magazine. The 2012 “Made Possible” contest received 5,400 applications, 27,171 total votes, 31,900 video views and Polartec picked up 6,000 new Facebook fans. Appalachian State University won the $10,000 grant.

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

Digital/Social Communications Campaign of the Year Bronze Awarded to Honeywell Friction Materials/Weber Shandwick For Bendix Brakes for Teen Safety Bendix performed an initial consumer survey of parents with teens (ages 15-19 with a vehicle) and found a variety of teen driving habits and maintenance knowledge. The survey found teen drivers tend to have older or used vehicles and typically, teens have some interest in the proper maintenance of their vehicles. The survey also found that parents need more education on driver safety and vehicle maintenance. In addition, many parents were unsure the last time they had checked the brakes on their teen’s car. From these results, Bendix created objectives to generate awareness of vehicle maintenance among teen drivers and their parents, create a connection for consumers between Honeywell Friction Materials/Bendix Brakes and driving safety and to secure online media exposure. The “Bendix Brakes for Teen Safety” campaign began during Teen Driver Safety Week on October 11, 2011. Bendix conducted a survey with Harris Interactive to provide data and gauge baseline numbers, developed a series of videos throughout the year to provide teens and parents with tips and information on safe driving and vehicle maintenance and created press releases with additional information to accompany each video, leveraging survey data to support the stories. The video and press releases went to a targeted media list, including automotive trade publications, daily newspapers, parenting reporters and bloggers, transportation and safety reporters. An interactive news release featuring videos, press releases, photos and other assets provide media members with material to shape their stories. Lastly, the company created a Bendix Brakes for Teen Safety Facebook page. Media hits included parenting and consumer sites, such as Examiner.com, Earnest Parenting and The Chicago Tribune. Automotive trade sites covered the initiative as well, allowing Honeywell Friction Materials to reach its traditional audience of technicians, distributors and other industry professionals. In total, coverage appeared on more than 625 sites, resulting in 91 million media impressions.

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

The Bendix Brakes for Teen Safety Facebook page generated more than 1,800 “likes” since September 2011 and created an engaging environment for teens, parents and other consumers to interact with the brand and learn about vehicle maintenance and safe driving. Videos on the Bendix Brakes YouTube channel accounted for nearly 5,000 views. Best Use of Digital/Social for Higher Education Marketing Bronze Awarded to RF|Binder For Beacon of Learning w/in Digital Space Recently, the national debate around education has reached a fever pitch. Spurred by concerns over student performance and the cost of higher education, the conversation among educators, political leaders, parents, students and general taxpayers about how to fix the U.S. education system spilled onto front pages and homepages everywhere. Many of the more targeted debates focus on issues of direct concern to educational service and content providers like McGraw-Hill Education, including the role of education technology and the notion of “open source” learning. Agency of record RF Binder saw an opportunity to insert client McGraw-Hill into this robust conversation and reinforce the company as a leader in the filed, delivering digital education solutions geared toward 21st century success. After researching successful social media channels operated by brands to help shape the strategy and determine the voice, content and style of McGrawHill Education’s overall social media presence, RF Binder determined the company would need to use its social media presence to provide something of value to its target audience groups. The agency identified Twitter as the social media platform best suited for sharing content regarding K-12 and higher education. The effectiveness of a McGraw-Hill Twitter presence depended heavily on the company’s ability to produce timely, engaging and relevant content as well as unique insight or perspective. McGraw-Hill Education needed to produce issue-based content that shied away from discussing products directly. RF Binder worked with McGraw-Hill Education to identify perspectives on the major education news,

issues and trends of the day, supplemented with opinion-based content and more lighthearted tweets designed to engage the target audiences and add a personal, human voice to the brand, while maintaining a smart, professional tone. To maintain timeliness and be seen as a resource for the latest education news, RF Binder gathered the most relevant and interesting education news and commentary published in the past 24 hours at the beginning of each business day. RF Binder then developed a program of 10 to 12 tweets for that day that shared this news/commentary along with the company’s unique insight and perspective. In order to accomplish this, the agency worked from its own knowledge of McGraw-Hill’s positions on relevant issues, bringing in subject-matter experts from McGrawHill Education when discussing complex or nuanced issues. The RF Binder team monitored the Twitter account throughout the day, engaging with individual Twitter users in real-time whenever possible, and leveraging relevant and popular hashtags. In addition, RF Binder seamlessly integrated McGraw-Hill Education’s Twitter account with its larger public relations program. For example, the firm drove awareness of McGraw-Hill’s presence at prominent industry conferences, such as the International Society for Technology in Education Conference and included mentions of the company’s Twitter presence in nearly all of the company’s press releases and encouraged media members to follow it when conducting outreach. The company also included a link to @MHEducation on its corporate homepage. The Twitter account cross-promoted a variety of other company initiatives, including a limited-time offer in June that made several of McGraw-Hill Education’s learning apps available for free and the July 2012 release of the company’s all-new “Anatomy and Physiology REVEALED” app for the iPad. RF Binder’s social and digital media effort successfully helped McGraw-Hill Education reach a significantly wider section of its target audience while simultaneously reinforcing the company as a thought leader on many of the topics most important to its business. The company’s Twitter account added over 4,000 followers (from 1,500), while McGraw-Hill counts among its follower base a number of influential names in education and

media. The account is frequently cited as a leading source for education news and commentary by its network of now over 5,700 followers that retweet and share information regularly. Best Use of Digital/Social for a Health/Fitness/Medicine Campaign Gold Awarded to Ron Sachs Communications For The Water Quality & Health Council’s “Healthy Pools” Campaign The Water Quality & Health Council is an independent, multidisciplinary group sponsored by the Chlorine Chemistry Division of the American Chemistry Council, an industry trade association. The group comprises scientific experts, health professionals and consumer advocates who serve as advisors to the Chlorine Chemistry Division of the American Council. The Council assists in the interpretation of scientific information related to the various applications of chlorine disinfection, provides peer review for the Chlorine Chemistry Division of the American Chemistry Council documents and advises the industry on its research priorities. In addition, members of the Water Quality & Health Council seek to provide public health officials, the media and the general public with a greater understanding of issues such as safe drinking water, wastewater, recreational waters, infection control and food safety. The Water Quality & Health Council launched its first “Healthy Pools” campaign in 2010. The campaign intended to promote healthy swimming, educate swimmers on pool management and to dispel healthrelated swimming pool myths. The campaign achieved limited success and failed to capture public attention or provide significant utility to swimming pool stakeholders. For the 2011 launch, they made the decision to hire Ron Sachs Communications, which turned into a success by comparison to the previous campaign and left the Water Quality & Health Council desiring for the 2012 version to be bigger than ever before. Prior to launching the 2012 “Healthy Pools” campaign, the Council commissioned a study analyzing swimmer hygiene. The study found that one in five Americans (19%) admitted to peeing in a pubic swimming pool and nearly one- quarter of

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

Americans (22%) report they never shower before entering a public swimming pool. To spread their message, the Water Quality & Health Council grew the Healthy Pools social media communities through organic social sharing of content and paid promotion/advertising. Ron Sachs pitched news, health and freebie bloggers and digital news outlets with campaign study results, messaging and a free pool test kit offer. A Pool Pal content series showcased the story and struggles of floating chlorine characters, which added comedic, likable and youthfriendly content to the Healthy Pools ecosystem that people could share with their networks. A @MyBackyardPool Twitter account spread campaign messaging in a fun and relatable way. The “Healthy Pools” campaign secured top-tier coverage with mainstream health and news blog websites, including Time.com Newsfeed, Shine from Yahoo.com, The Huffington Post Healthy Living, CNN’s “The Chart,” The Consumerist, Yahoo.com The Week, Limelife.com and WebProNews.com. Coverage from these digital outlets exceeded seven million impressions. The Healthy Pools Facebook Page grew from 31,084 fans at campaign launch to 70,432 people at the campaign’s seasonal conclusion. The monthly count of engaged-users reached 63,528. While Facebook housed the largest Healthy Pools audience, other sites, including Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr generated opted-in audiences totaling 12,048 people. The campaign overcame a variety of high-profile swimmers, including Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte speaking out in opposition of the Healthy Pools campaign message. They told their stories of peeing in the Olympic pool and explained that nearly 100% of Olympic swimmers act in such a way. Given that the 2012 Healthy Pools campaign exceeded 13.6 million impressions in the wake of major celebrities presenting opposing perspectives made the effort that much more significant. Best Use of Digital/Social for a Health/Fitness/Medicine Campaign Silver Awarded to City of Hope For Super Foods for Super Health

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

City of Hope made a strategic decision several years ago to focus on increasing national awareness and fundraising to support it research mission. The greatest challenge from a marketing perspective was creating a national brand for an institution based on the unfamiliar City of Duarte, California. Although City of Hope’s research discoveries have led to scientific breakthroughs that affect millions of people all over the world, most of its marketing funds were devoted to attracting patients to its local medical center leaving few dollars remaining for national outreach. The non-profit knew its national message needed to look beyond the exquisite care people received at the hospital and focus on how City of Hope affected people everywhere through its research.

super foods research. They also created a tab on their Facebook page to host the initiative and invite its audience to join them in the fight against cancer by cooking with “super foods.” In addition, City of Hope gathered recipes by reaching out to popular food bloggers and celebrity chefs. Monthly fan growth soared on Facebook, growing more than four-fold, increasing an average of 1,600 fans per month after the launch of the super foods initiative. Super foods represent one of the most engaging topics on City of Hope’s Facebook page, contributing to the overall increase in engagement metrics. Twitter super foods-specific mentions from consumer reached 25,00030,000 additional followers.

As social media became more mainstream, City of Hope recognized how powerful this tool could be for amplifying their communication efforts and building relationships with new and existing supporters. With this in mind, City of Hope made an investment in social media marketing, believing in its potential to help them reach their national awareness objectives.

Best Use of Digital/Social for a Health/Fitness/Medicine Campaign Bronze Awarded to GE Healthcare For 25 Million and Counting: How GE Healthcare Used Facebook, Twitter and Weibo to Help Fight Cancer

The team knew engaging content represented the key to social media success. City of Hope had an endless amount of content, but as a media institution, the challenge was figuring out how to share complex scientific research in an engaging, consumer-friendly way. The solution resided in a topic that is part of everyday life and often top of mind—food.

In August 2012, GE Healthcare (the health business of General Electric Company) launched its second #GetFit campaign to raise awareness for cancer and underline GE Healthcare’s commitment to fighting the disease. The campaign would be a global competition, played across all of the most popular social platforms.

City of Hope’s scientists were among the first to discover that five common “super foods”—blueberries, cinnamon, grapes, mushrooms and pomegranates—may have the ability to fight and prevent cancer. The research was both easy to explain and comprehend. City of Hope could also leverage the growing popularity of recipes and healthy lifestyle/diet content to make the research interesting and useful.

Occurring between August 20 and September 28, 2012, #GetFit participants earned points by sharing their healthy daily lifestyle choices on a public social graph with the #GetFit hashtag included in their posts. Players earned further points by challenging their friends through social networks, resulting in the game “going viral” and generating widespread visibility for GE Healthcare and public information around cancer prevention.

The result was an initiative called “Super Foods for Super Health: Cooking Against Cancer,” a weekly recipe series featuring potentially cancer-fighting super foods in partnership with food blogger, dieticians and celebrity chefs. Each week, City of Hope shared a new delicious “super foods” recipe on its Facebook wall, Twitter and Pinterest board with integrated messaging about City of Hope’s

The highest-scoring players received ranking on a worldwide leader board. As well as getting involved individually, #GetFit players could create teams or join existing teams formed by others. These teams competed for total points in a separate ranking on a team-based leader board. The final campaign-winning team resided in Korea, while the individual winner was American Marshall Poindexter, a regular and bilingual tweeter who provides sensible fitness resolutions and methods for

staying healthy in the long term. #GetFit’s main channels included Twitter, Facebook and Weibo (China’s largest social network), combined with a dedicated #GetFit website in 8 languages and 15 ambassadors on Pinterest and the #GetFit website. Ambassadors were often proactive participants through all social channels, encouraging healthier lifestyle choices and helping the public become involved in #GetFit. The 2012 #GetFit campaign also employed “gamification” to great effect, increasing both game activity and campaign visibility. #GetFit achieved 25.5 million Twitter impressions, 4,200 link clicks, 1,400 mentions, and 1,600 retweets, while @GEHealthcare gained 1,660 new followers during the campaign. GE Healthcare earned 300,000 Facebook shares as well. Traffic to the GE Healthcare website more than doubled during course of the competition. #GetFit was also popular with major influencers on Twitter, including Dr. Bertalan Mesko and Line StorgaardConley, as well as singer Christina Milian. Hollywood actress Eileen Grubba was also a key influencer, featuring health tips on her Facebook page. Notable social media influencers Sean Swarner and Frederic Llordachs shared #GetFit with their followers as well. Best Measurement of Digital/Social Communications Gold Awarded to Zeno Group For Seattle’s Best Coffee Brews Up a Black Friday Deal with a Twist In 2010, Starbucks-owned Seattle’s Best Coffee unveiled a bold strategy for reinvention of the 40-year old brand—make premium coffee far more accessible and bring Seattle’s Best to places where premium coffee has not been available before. To achieve that mission, the coffee brand developed a new packaged coffee offering, the Level System. The Level System uses numbers and colors to show the strength of each roast, creating a far more simplified approach to help consumers find the perfect coffee to fit their taste profiles.

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

In 2011, Seattle’s Best Coffee charged Zeno Group to make a splash about packaged coffee, driving trial and brand awareness to their new consumer target—the “hopeful striver.” The brand made a strategic decision to leverage Facebook as its primary earned, owned and paid marketing channel. The brand learned this target audience often works a second or part-time job in the service industry, making $35-$65K a year. In response, Zeno and Seattle’s Best launched a Black Friday deal with a twist—offering free coffee to those working the busiest shopping day of the year. Those working could log on to the Seattle’s Best Facebook page to claim their free pot of Levels coffee. Zeno identified the opportunity to appeal to a key segment of the target, retail workers, during the approaching holiday season. According to a 2010 article in the Christian Science Monitor, approximately 25 million people work retail jobs on Black Friday in 2009. This also proved a timely news hook—increased media attention was being placed on stores opening for Black Friday earlier than ever and Thanksgiving being cut short for millions of retail workers. Zeno made the recommendation to create a mainstream, newsworthy program with a Facebook call to action. On Facebook, news fans were encouraged to “like” the page (current fans directed to the “Working Black Friday” tab), then choose from the following options relating to Black Friday: “Yes, I am working,” “No, I am not working” and “Share, I know someone who is.” To generate further buzz, Seattle’s Best hosted a Twitter party with Mom Central about Black Friday deals and tips. The topic struck a chord with the audience, resulting in the party’s customer hashtag becoming a trending topic for that hour. Further, Zeno leveraged the news trends of Black Friday deals, holiday workers and stores opening early with broadcast, print and online media. A special care package went to broadcast media in key markets at launch. The brand also leveraged relationships to drive awareness and spread the “Best of Black Friday” message, as Subway stores inside select Walmart locations distributed free coffee to shoppers and workers on Black Friday.

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

More than 84,000 consumers claimed their free sample of Seattle’s Best Coffee, while nearly 50,000 consumers printed exclusive $2 off coupon with a 30% coupon redemption rate and sales increased at Walmart by 30%. The brand’s Facebook page secured more than 100,000 new “likes” and more than 500,000 consumers visited the Facebook application. Twitter conversations garnered more than 116 million impressions within two weeks.

them.

Coverage highlights included USA Today, regional CBS and NBC broadcast outlets, The Los Angeles Times, AOL.com and National Retail Federation’s “Smart Brief” newsletter. Overall, the campaign received more than 269 broadcast, 258 lifestyle-blog, 16 radio and 784 print and online stories.

Weekly social listening reports enabled the team to keep a finger on the pulse of the Army Reserve’s social media efforts. By discontinuing daily reports, the agency reduced “noise” in the data, instead focusing on identifying and responding to the most meaningful results. The agency developed reports to focus on five key themes for the Army Reserve. Those themes included joining, civilian employment, family and Posttraumatic stress disorder/suicide as well as soldier fitness.

Best Measurement of Digital/Social Communications Silver Awarded to Weber Shandwick For US Army Reserve Status: Engaged During 2011 as Weber Shandwick and the U.S. Army Reserve worked to establish regular patterns and standards for social media management, the Army Reserve’s social media strategy heavily emphasized daily, weekly and monthly monitoring and measurement. The strategy focused on monitoring for rapid response and content development in social media. As a strategy, it helped the Army Reserve make strong initial forays into the social media space. But as the audience grew, it no longer reflected the most efficient use of client or agency resources. As the social media presence and audience matured during 2012, it was essential to update the Army Reserve’s social media strategy and objectives to take growth and engagement to a new level. Weber Shandwick worked to develop a social media strategy that reinforced measurement efforts to collect meaningful, relevant data, which was used to inform social media recommendations, improve outcomes and ultimately lead to outstanding growth and engagement. This meant utilizing data to inform the type of social media posts, monitoring trends for opportunities to engage and identifying influencers who affect relevant online conversations, in order to target and engage

The strategy focused on three major components, refocusing monitoring on weekly social listening reports that concentrate on key themes and the most successful social post, monitoring the online activities of individuals and organizations who influence relevant conversations in social media and optimizing Facebook ads for maximum audience growth and engagement.

Suicide prevention turned into a major topic of discussion in August after the Army reported a record number of July suicides. Weber Shandwick recognized this trend early, allowed the Army Reserve to participate in online conversations, refocusing the dialogue on the availability of resources for soldiers facing PTSD. This engagement segued into an even stronger focus on suicide prevention in September—the Army’s designated Suicide Prevention Month. Additionally, these reports offered weekly updates on the Army Reserve’s most effective social media posts from the previous week. By highlighting successful posts on a regular basis, the client-agency team developed stronger insight on the types of posts users found valuable and engaging, subsequently optimizing the editorial calendar in favor of those posts. These efforts helped demonstrate that over time, users responded strongly to posts focusing on internal matters within the Army and military. This finding enabled the team to target the audiences of soldiers, veterans and military families more sharply. Lastly, Facebook is a major hub for soldiers, veterans and military families who want to engage with each other and the military, so it made sense to leverage the social media tool’s ad to reach those audiences and stimulate growth on the Army Reserve page. Weber Shandwick launched and managed three Facebook ads connected to holidays with high levels of significance for military

audiences—Veterans Day, Memorial Day and Patriot Day. The campaigns combined Facebook ads with compelling, relevant content and calls to action, stimulating growth and engagement. By closely monitoring the actions catalyzed by these ads, the agency could take key finds from each experience and use them to continually improve metrics on Facebook at all levels. The effort saw more than 100% growth in reach across Twitter and Facebook and consistently high engagement on both platforms. The three Facebook ad campaigns consistently and dramatically outperformed industry standards for ad buys of their size and each campaign significantly improved upon previous ones. The Army Reserve’s reach more than doubled on Twitter and more than tripled on Facebook. On Twitter, sharing remains consistently high, as a third of Army Reserve mentions have been replies or retweets, and many of the most popular tweets have linked to vital resources for soldiers, veterans and families. The Army Reserve’s Facebook page saw 63,874 total likes, 1,656,827 average monthly post views and 34,967 average monthly active users. On Twitter, the Army Reserve has 10,683 total followers, while one in three tweets about the Army Reserve in fiscal year 2012 was either a retweet or a reply. Best Microsite or Specialized Website Bronze Awarded to Spelman College For Spelman Website Spelman College is a small, prestigious, highly selective, historically Black college that prepares women to change to world. Located in Atlanta, the college provides an education experience unlike any other, embracing a longlasting and life-changing commitment to academic rigor, career development, community involvement and positive social impact. In February 2003, the Spelman College Office of Communications launched a weekly internal newsletter, called the “Spelman Connection,” which went out to 2,600 faculty, staff and students at the College. Featuring stories about students, faculty and state of the College, the newsletter provided this information to the campus constituency.

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

Three years later, the College purchased an e-marketing tool, iContact, to expand its distribution to include alumnae, the board of trustees and friends of the College. In February 2012, the College surveyed its readers to find out what they wanted to see in the “Connection.” Content was pretty much on target, with the exception of alumnae wanting to see more about themselves. In response, the College used the “Spelman in the News” section to become a link that features alumnae stories. In September, they featured a new template and in October expanded distribution from 14,000 to 15,000. From January through June 2012, 27 issues of the “Spelman Connection” were produced and distributed, featuring 138 stories. Since January, the “Connection” has yielded an average of 16.1 percent open rate. Best Microsite or Specialized Website Gold Awarded to GroundFloor Media For Online War Room: Securely Simulating Online Conversations and Crises The worst-case scenario for a business in a crisis used to be a lead story on an evening network newscast and a story on the front page of the morning newspaper. Today, the greater risk for companies is what happens when readers share the story across social networks in real time. In the era of social media, not only do unexpected sources have the opportunity to say, report and offer opinions at will, but also able to do so without any type of factual checks or balances. The information lives online in perpetuity and can have material impact on a company’s brand perception and reputation. In response to this evolution, GroundFloor Media (GFM) sought a tool that would allow them to better prepare clients to enter the social media arena, broaden their communications efforts on social media platforms and overcome any anxieties associated with being active on social media. GFM’s digital strategy team developed a proprietary tool in-house, adopting a three-pronged strategy to guide them in this endeavor. They developed a tool to allow clients to simulate social media conversations in a realtime, private/secure setting, so they are better prepared to have day-to-day, as well as difficult conversations on

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

multiple social media platforms. The tool also provided a structure to allow clients to experience a wide variety of scenarios and online conversations to develop social media response plans and corporate social media policies. Lastly, the company wanted to provide a tool to allow clients to train existing and new social media/community managers to engage in conversations consistent with the brand’s objectives and overall voice via social networks. Out of this strategy came the Online War Room, an online, secure and proprietary tool allowing GroundFloor Media to work closely with clients to create customized training sessions that mimic online crises and issues in real-time, across multiple social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs and online news outlets. In developing the OWR platform, GFM chose to structure it in a blog format, which provides a high-level of flexibility and ease of use. The intent was for the simulations to focus on conversations and content that could occur or posted, rather than on the frequently changing bells and whistles of social networks. This also allowed the tool to be evergreen, reducing the likelihood that it will quickly become outmoded or require frequent maintenance. Utilizing actual client experiences, GFM developed the platform so it could encompass a variety of scenarios (negative posts, photos, videos, links to outside information, hashtags and @replies). Client feedback was overwhelmingly positive, resulting in six separate client simulations. Clients that have conducted sessions or are planning to utilize the OWR include Qdoba Mexican Grill, Orange Leaf Yogurt, BNSF Railway, Colorado Garden Show, LiveWell Colorado, The Southcentral Foundation, Bellco Credit Union and SlimGenics. Media coverage for OWR includes placements in The Denver Post, Denver Business Journal, the Denver PR Blog, Ragan’s PR Daily, Ragan.com, Fortune Africa and O’Dwyer’s. Best Microsite or Specialized Website Silver Awarded to Union Pacific Railroad Corporate Communications For UP150.com This year, Union Pacific Railroad celebrated its 150th

Anniversary, a milestone few companies ever have the privilege of reaching. Even few companies have such a rich history to share. At the height of the Civil War as he fought to unite America north and south, President Abraham Lincoln decided connecting our nation east to west was just as important. In 1862, he signed the Pacific Railway Act, setting the first American transcontinental railroad into motion and creating Union Pacific to build its eastern stretch. The 150th Anniversary had several goals, including reaching each of Union Pacific’s 45,000 employees, connecting with the 7,3000 cities and town along the railroad’s 23-state system, sharing its story with investors, customers and elected officials and the general public and differentiating Union Pacific from industry peers. Union Pacific’s Anniversary celebration had hundreds of moving parts, including a steam engine tour, more than 150 employee and community celebrations and a nationwide media blitz, but the heart of the celebration beat online. Union Pacific launched a special website— UP150.com—on Jan. 1, 2012. The site contained a timeline of the railroad’s 150-year history, an archive of railroad stories and “Great Big Rollin’ Railroad” videos. Promotion occurred on Union Pacific’s Facebook page and Twitter. Fans submitted more than 180 videos and the finalists flew to Omaha, Nebraska for an “American Idol” event, which streamed live on UP150.com. The grand-prize winning video received $15,000 and later aired as a commercial on CNN. Union Pacific’s Facebook page received 5,000 new “likes” and more than 2,300 new Twitter followers. Nearly 1.4 million people took part in anniversary events and more than 2,800 news stories ran about the anniversary, most of them mentioning the UP150.com website. A company profile on the front of The New York Times Business section discussed the 150th Anniversary strategy, while Bloomberg TV produced four segments. Union Pacific also landed coverage in newspapers across its 23-state system, including The Houston Chronicle, Salt Lake Tribune, Sacramento Bee, Spokesman-Review, Advocate and Omaha World-Herald. A video news release submitted to TV stations triggered nearly 100 TV news stories, reaching an estimated 45

million people. Best New or Redesigned Website of the Year Gold Awarded to Cisco Systems For Cisco’s the Network Cisco’s “The Network” was launched in June 2011 to fully embrace the communication strategy of brand journalism. Cisco shed the traditional corporate newsroom model, which only promoted news about a brand, to become a true newsroom of the future. By embracing the brand journalism communication strategy, The Network became a news portal that not only focuses on news about Cisco, but also reports on topics that interest a wider audience. The Network’s redesigned content was to be engaging, share-worthy and viral. Further, The Network was to become a standard for brand journalism for other corporations that hoped to revamp their newsrooms. The message behind The Network was for the relaunched newsroom to become a great online destination for the latest technology news and Cisco insights. Multimedia content, such as articles, infographics and videos posted under the topics of “Data Center,” “Core Networks,” “Video,” “Collaboration,” “Cisco Culture” and “Social Media,” to appeal to both an audience seeking Cisco information and to readers looking for more general technology or social media information. Cisco used multimedia content, including articles written by a team of media veterans for Forbes, Bloomberg and Business Insider, demo videos featuring Cisco solutions and infographics on cloud computing and other modern technology trends. Cisco spread awareness about The Network to its employees by promoting it on the internal Cisco employee homepage and on digital signage placed in the common area of the Cisco office buildings. To reach an external audience, Cisco ran ad campaigns on Mashable.com and social advertisements across Cisco’s 200 Twitter and Facebook pages. The newsroom also had an HTML widget box that enabled readers to grab the HTML code and place content from The Network directly onto their page. To further increase the sharing of the content, the “Take, Share, Engage”

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

campaign was created to encourage people to literally take the content from The Network for reposting—the only ask was to credit Cisco in the post. Within the first week of its launch, The Network’s landing page received 90K visits from 189 different countries. The Network currently receives more than 250K page views per month with each unique piece of content getting approximately 1,100 views. In addition, each piece of content averages over 200 Facebook “likes” and 1,000 tweets. The Network also received press mentions and accolades from renowned publications, such as Social Media Today, Ragan.com, PRWeek, Zdnet, Brian Solis and Splash Media. Best New or Redesigned Website of the Year Silver Awarded to Waggener Edstrom Worldwide For Shared Learning Collaborative Website The Shared Learning Collaborative (SLC) is an alliance building an education technology infrastructure to facilitate personalized learning for every U.S. student. The alliance works with pilot states and partners to design and develop a technology foundation on which third parties can build and distribute education solutions and products. The organization’s website (slcedu.org) promotes the technologies and serves as a centralized information resource about the SLC, project progress and the technologies in development. The goal of SLC is to help teachers more efficiently enable effective, personalized instruction. The organization’s mission is built on the theory that there are two main barriers preventing the education sector from realizing this goal—a lack of data interoperability and application compatibility among the solutions currently in existence and a lack of information about what learning products actually work for the intended end users of educators, students and community leaders. The SLC sought to build engagement and rapport with these diverse audiences who share a passion for using technology to improve K-12 education in the United States by launching a blog representing the many voices of the project, using Twitter for wider community-building

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

and frequent updates, and using YouTube for easy access to videos. The straightforward website structure seeks to eliminate barriers between the technically complex project and tangible, meaningful outcomes by focusing on the areas the initiative seeks to impact, highlighting project participants, philanthropic supporters, collaborators and participating states and school districts. Strategies for site development include establishing an inclusive, welcoming tone that builds rapport, establish an impact narrative by focusing on user benefits and desired outcomes and provide a clear calls to action that establish purposeful next steps for all visitors. From February 1 through Sept. 26, 2012, the SLC website attracted more than 24,000 unique visitors and more than 42,000 total visits. Visitors average more than four minutes on site and consumer an average of more than four pages per visit. More than 40% of site visitors represent return visitors, page views have reached nearly 200,000 and more than 500 website visitors have signed up to receive monthly projects updates in email. The SLC website won an Interactive Media Awards (IMA) Best in Class Award in the Education category by recording an overall score of 484 out of 500. The Best in Class Award is the highest honor bestowed by the IMA, representing the very best in planning, execution and overall professionalism. Best New or Redesigned Website of the Year Bronze Awarded to Hilton Hotels & Resorts For Hilton Global Media Center Relaunch/Redesign In January 2010, Hilton Hotels & Resorts, the flagship brand of Hilton Worldwide, launched Hilton Global Media Center (HGMC), the hotel industry’s first comprehensive online resource created exclusively for the media and designed to act global, but “speak local.” As the world’s most recognized hotel brand, Hilton Hotels & Resorts is known for its unmatched expertise and experience in global travel. From being the first to install televisions in guest rooms to boasting the first hotel in the world with both LEED and Green Seal environmental certifications, Hilton Hotels & Resorts commits itself to pursuing excellence through industry firsts. The 2012 re-launch of Hilton’s media center reflected

this pursuit of excellence. Recognizing the continuing need to serve both traditional journalists as well as online media professionals, Hilton Global Brand Public Relations re-launched the site to blend three distinct aspects of the Hilton Hotels & Resorts brand— innovation, style and reach. While the first media center relied on traditional navigation, the re-launched site used information-ready mega menus, putting news in your hands before you even get to it. As the content in the HGMC is vital to internal and external audiences, both the website and the mobile site have undergone a complete overhaul, with the mobile site strategically directing mobile users to the information visitors on the go need at the ready, while keeping the entire site easily available as well. The re-launch made the Hilton brand’s online newsroom as cutting-edge as possible for the international community that regularly relies on the HGMC for information. A key part of the redesign strategy was to place the most pertinent and top-level information upfront, instead of users having to dig for it. Hilton Hotels & Resorts also wanted an HGMC that was uncluttered and easy-to-navigate for users of all skill levels. Innovative changes to the award-winning HGMC included easy-to-navigate mega menus highlighting featured pages, improved social media integration and a new Bing mapping tool that instantly connects users to related property profiles, news articles, photo galleries and more. Visitors can customize their parameters and receive news as it happens via email or RSS. The relaunched HGMC is iPad and mobile-optimized to accommodate the changing nature of media professionals who have moved from behind the desk to constantly on the go. The HGMC has always been an invaluable internal resource for the Hilton Global Brand Public Relations team and the global properties it supports. The redesigned HGMC gives these internal audiences a dynamic tool with which to cultivate new media relationships and community resources. From June 30, 2011 to August 31, 2012, the HGMC received 254 media accommodation requests and 246 media inquiries. In that same period, more than 24,500 images have been downloaded directly from the HGMC. Qualitative results included praise from some of the industry’s top media outlets within just hours of the July

9, 2012 launch. Members of the HGBPR team received admiration from the President of GlobalHotelNetwork.com, the editor of ENTRÉE Travel Newsletter and the international news editor for HotelNewsNow.com. The re-launch also secured John Forrest Ales, senior director for Global Brand Public Relations for Hilton Hotels & Resorts, an interview with PRWeek.com only a day after the new site was announced to media. Best Use of Digital/Social in a Public Affairs/Awareness Campaign Gold Awarded to National Association of Social Workers For National Association of Social Workers Social Workers Speak Social workers serve a vital role in American society by working in hospitals and helping patients get the best care. They ensure students have housing, food and other services they need to get the best possible education. Social workers also serve military personnel, veterans and their families, advocate for the elderly and protect children from abuse and neglect. The nation’s more than 650,000 social workers represent educated and trained professionals who help people who may be experiencing some of the worst times in their lives. Yet the media often depicts social workers as cold bureaucrats who “steal babies” from parents on the slightest pretense of abuse. Who can use a social work title varies by state and people who are not educated in the profession may call themselves social workers. As a result, reporters often label state child welfare agency staff involved in child abuse and death cases as social workers, even when these people are not trained and educated social workers or licensed to practice social work in that state. The National Association of Social Workers launched a campaign in 2005 to improve the image of social workers in the media, engage movers and shakers in the entertainment and news industries and empower social workers to improve how the profession is portrayed in the public. Since 2009, one of the main tools of this campaign is the SocialWorkersSpeak.org website and its affiliated Facebook and Twitter pages. Between June 30, 2011 and August 31, 2012, the

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

National Association of Social Workers used the SocialWorkersSpeak.org website to help build a relationship with the producers and writers of the FOX sci-fi television series “Touch,” which included a prominent social work role. The association also worked with the distributors of the British film “Oranges and Sunshine” to encourage social workers across the nation to view the film, which contained a positive social work role. Further, they met with writers representing actor and director Blair Underwood, working on a social work television series. They also used the social workers website to engage and build relationships with several television networks, including the Oprah Winfrey Network, the Sundance Channel and the CW. Officials at FOX invited NASW staff to be part of the premiere of the “Touch” series in New York City in March 2012. More than 12 million people watched a special preview of the series in January. Actor Underwood endorsed the social work profession during Social Work Month in March 2012. The Oprah Winfrey Network turned to social workers to review several documentaries that either featured social workers or a social work issue. The Sundance Channel and TVOne agreed to work with SocialWorkersSpeak.org to feature two new 2012 reality series featuring the work of social workers—“Get to Work” and “Save My Son.” NASW helped local chapters draft communications plans to address inaccurate and misleading coverage of social workers in child abuse and neglect cases. Documentary filmmakers now increasingly turn to NASW and SocialWorkersSpeak.org to promote their films. SocialWorkersSpeak.org attracted 127,685 unique visitors between June 30, 2011 and August 31, 2012, an almost 30 percent increase over the previous year. Best Use of Digital/Social in a Public Affairs/Awareness Campaign Silver Awarded to M Booth For Women Entrepreneurs are #PoweringTomorrow In March 2012, American Express OPEN released the “State of Women-Owned Business Report,” a proprietary research report uncovering the growth, impact and characteristics of today’s women business owner population via 2011 U.S. Census Report data. The report revealed that as of 2011, there were over 8.3 million

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

women business owners in the United States, generating nearly $1.3 trillion in revenues and employing 7.7 million people. OPEN’s mission is to help small businesses do more business and one of the ongoing ways the brand does that is by arming small business owners with important and useful information. The State of the Women-Owned Business Report does just that for women business owners across the U.S., and the 76-page report received a wide breadth of national publicity and media coverage in 49 states. OPEN wanted to be sure the data and findings were easily accessible to and in the hands of women business owners and their networks, leveraging data to drive brand favorability and prove useful and inspiring information and content to the woman, business owner community. OPEN tapped the emotional story of being a woman business owner by pulling powerful data points from the greater Woman-Owned Businesses Report to create compelling visual content. OPEN wrote the data points based on share-ability, spread-ability, what would best resonate, inspire and encourage sharing among women business owners and their networks. In addition to the infographics depicting specific data from the WomenOwned Business Report, agency M Booth identified and boarded 14 successful, socially active and relatable women business owners to display their personal success stories wit the use of visuals, adding the personal and emotional side to the story. M Booth identified targeted influencers, bloggers, content partners, women business owners and active social presences that reach woman business owners, across numerous verticals, to send the visual narrative. In addition, the 14 business owners featured in the campaign spread the word by sharing the infographics across their online and offline networks. For example, Rashmi Sinha, co-founder of SlideShare pushed out her personalized visual to the SlideShare network on SlideShare, via their email newsletter and across their social platforms, including Facebook and Twitter. Other spotlights included Robin Chase, founder & former CEO, Zipcar, Alisa Volkman, co-founder, Babble.com and Jen Hyman, founder & CEO, Rent the Runway. OPEN carefully selected an online media outlet— Mashable.com—with a highly engaging and large female

(48%) audience as the content partner of the campaign to assist in driving the conversation with unique sponsored content, including round-ups, original editorial content and video interviews with influential female founders in tech, leading to nine unique content pieces. Mashable.com conducted a live video panel, bringing together three high profile women business owners in the tech space; Rachel Sklar, founder, Change the Ratio and TheLi.st, Angela Jia Kim, founder, Om Aroma and Savor the Success, and Kellee Khalil, founder and CEO, Lover.ly, moderated by Allison Silver, VP Brand, Advertising and Advocacy at OPEN. OPEN measured the campaign’s success by online and social engagement, specifically social interactions with the 22 visuals that made up the narrative. The goal at the outset of the campaign was to garner 100,000 social interactions (blog posts, likes, comments, tweets, retweets, +1s, pins, video views), and by the end of the campaign 157,651 social interactions were accrued, 58% above goal. Online media outreach resulted in 147 placements on news and blog sites, resulting in 55,166 social interactions. An article generated for Mashable.com titled “10 Thing You Didn’t Know About Women-Owned Businesses” received 2,505 social shares and 10,472 page views. An article included in the content partnership entitled “44 Female Founders Every Entrepreneur Should Know” received 14,780 social interactions across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and StumbleUpon. SBest Use of Digital/Social in a Public Affairs/Awareness Campaign Bronze Awarded to Union Pacific Railroad Corporate Communications For Union Pacific’s 150th Anniversary This year, Union Pacific Railroad celebrated its 150th Anniversary, a milestone few companies ever have the privilege of reaching. Even few companies have such a rich history to share. At the height of the Civil War as he fought to unite America north and south, President Abraham Lincoln decided connecting our nation east to west was just as important. In 1862, he signed the Pacific Railway Act,

setting the first American transcontinental railroad into motion and creating Union Pacific to build its eastern stretch. The 150th Anniversary had several goals, including reaching each of Union Pacific’s 45,000 employees, connecting with the 7,3000 cities and town along the railroad’s 23-state system, sharing its story with investors, customers and elected officials and the general public and differentiating Union Pacific from industry peers. Union Pacific’s Anniversary celebration had hundreds of moving parts, including a steam engine tour, more than 150 employee and community celebrations and a nationwide media blitz, but the heart of the celebration beat online. Union Pacific launched a special website— UP150.com—on Jan. 1, 2012. The site contained a timeline of the railroad’s 150-year history, an archive of railroad stories and “Great Big Rollin’ Railroad” videos. Promotion occurred on Union Pacific’s Facebook page and Twitter. Fans submitted more than 180 videos and the finalists flew to Omaha, Nebraska for an “American Idol” event, which streamed live on UP150.com. The grand-prize winning video received $15,000 and later aired as a commercial on CNN. Union Pacific’s Facebook page received 5,000 new “likes” and more than 2,300 new Twitter followers. Nearly 1.4 million people took part in anniversary events and more than 2,800 news stories ran about the anniversary, most of them mentioning the UP150.com website. A company profile on the front of The New York Times Business section discussed the 150th Anniversary strategy, while Bloomberg TV produced four segments. Union Pacific also landed coverage in newspapers across its 23-state system, including The Houston Chronicle, Salt Lake Tribune, Sacramento Bee, Spokesman-Review, Advocate and Omaha World-Herald. A video news release submitted to TV stations triggered nearly 100 TV news stories, reaching an estimated 45 million people.

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

Best Use of Digital/Social to Pitch Traditional Media Gold Awarded to HISTORY For Hatfields & McCoys Lynn Gardner, SVP Publicity, Chris Meador, VP Marketing and Susan Levoli Director of Publicity HISTORY channel’s first foray into the scripted arena resulted in the Hatfields & McCoys and represented the latest stage in the network’s brand evolution. Since its re-brand, HISTORY has made strides to become a leader in all forms of programming, including scripted content. Hatfields & McCoys tells the tale of Devil Anse Hatfield (Kevin Costner) and Randall McCoy (Bill Paxton), close friends during the Civil War, who return to their neighboring homes in West Virginia and Kentucky to increasing tensions, misunderstandings and resentments that soon explode into all-out warfare. As the hostilities grow, friend, neighbors and outside forces join the fight, bringing the two states to the brink of another Civil War. With the arrival of the miniseries, HISTORY faced a brand communications challenge. Over the past two years, the channel had steadily increased in ratings with successful launches within the nonfiction and documental genres. However, Hatfields & McCoys stood as the first scripted program to ever air on the network. HISTORY needed to speak to their current audience, but also bring in new viewers, while appealing to the entertainment community as the show served as a launching pad for future scripted fare. Leveraging the big name stars and the miniseries’ highquality production value, HISTORY marketed the miniseries like a cinematic event through unique, high profile media placements. The idea was to create a “can’t miss” level of expectations for consumers by completely immersing them in Hatfields & McCoys promotions. A month-long social media and buzz-building campaign started in pre-production, utilizing the massive social networks of HISTORY and key talent. HISTORY decided to capitalize on the absence of the miniseries as a format—a storytelling device most networks had walked away from in recent years. Breathing new life into this genre, Hatfields & McCoys would distinctively position HISTORY as a new

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

Elizabeth Arden. With its ability to easily share imagery and visually bring products and brand personalities to life, combined with the viral nature of the repin function, the agency knew they had to quickly establish a presence for Elizabeth Arden on the social channel. The visual nature of the platform married with the robust imagery of the beauty industry offered a unique opportunity for a cosmetics brand to connect with consumers in a more emotional way. As Lippe Taylor set out to launch Pinterest, they wanted to find a unique way to launch the channel. Simultaneously, they were working on promotions with Elizabeth Arden’s long-time charity partner—Look Good Feel Better—an amazing organization that helps cancer patients manage the visual side effects of treatment. They have helped over 800,000 women in the U.S. Elizabeth Arden has worked with them since the program started in 1988 and looked for new ways to contribute and draw attention to the work they do. The agency decided to move forward with a social good campaign and began examining the right channels to do so.

The HISTORY special was the most-watched, adsupported primetime television event and not just once, but three times. A total of 14.3 million people watched the third installment of the miniseries after the first two parts had picked up 13.9 million and 13.1 million viewers, respectively. The day after the final installment, four different Hatfield & McCoy-related titles listed among the top “movers & shakers” on Amazon. Talent from the miniseries appeared in success stories in outlets such as “Extra,” “Access Hollywood,” “Entertainment Tonight” and WSJ.com. Most importantly, HISTORY successfully established itself as a reliable destination for premium-scripted programming, a trendsetter and leader among cable networks.

Inspired by Pin It To Win It promotion, the agency took this concept a step further by creating a philanthropy initiative. The “Elizabeth Arden Pin It To Give It” program was born. Simplicity was the key, so the team created an easy call to action—simply repin—and Pinterest provides an easy barrier to entry. For every repin from the board, Elizabeth Arden donates eyeliner to longtime charity partner Look Good Feel Better, up to 10,000 pieces. Lippe Taylor soft-launched Elizabeth Arden’s Pinterest account in late May with a few product boards to establish best pinning practices. On June 27, the revolutionary social good program went live with the creation of the Pin It To Give It board.

Best Use of Digital/Social to Pitch Traditional Media Silver Awarded to Elizabeth Arden and Lippe Taylor For Revolutionizing Social Good: Elizabeth Arden #PinItToGiveIt

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

Insider Beauty Buzz. Influencer outreach included working with retailers and celebrities to help promote the campaign and securing multiple tweets from celebrity partner Mariah Carey.

producer for the show. Then, she sent a note saying she wanted to offer Johnson a summer internship and wanted to contact him. She mentioned she had already received approval to pay for his board too.

Within 12 hours, Pinter had an email from the senior producer and shortly after that received a call with a human resources producer at “Ellen” who asked for approval to present Johnson with the offer on air the following week. The segment aired with the firm’s logo on the screen. Pinter wrote a blog post published on the “Social Media and Social Life” blog and the team tweeted news of the hit and put it on the firm’s Facebook page, tripling Facebook engagement during the two-day period after the show. The massage splash on “Ellen” led to several thousand hits on our website.

Best Use of Digital/Social to Pitch Traditional Media Bronze Awarded to Havas PR For Getting Linked to “Ellen” Allison Pinter, director of talent and development at Havas PR North America had recently returned to the agency after six months off to work for a former client, Yéle Haiti—an NGO started by Wyclef Jean that provides relief in Haiti—and had also gotten involved with the Bob Woodruff Foundation, which supports and provides resources to injured service members. Pinter had no PR background before becoming Havas’ HR Director and became a key figure on the 24/7 running of media relations for Jean’s presidential campaign in Haiti. On March 15, 2012, Pinter sat down to watch “The Ellen DeGeneres” and little did she know she was about to combine her two loves—human resources and human services. Pinter watched Joshua Johnson talk with Ellen and learned he used his talent for tap dancing to pay for his college education at Penn State. Every weekend, Johnson took a bus from Penn State to New York City to tap dance on the subways to raise money to work his way through college. During the interview, Johnson mentioned his communications major and that he was from New York. Pinter hires communications majors for her agency based in New York. She decided to reach out to the young man, but did not know how. She searched on LinkedIn and quickly found a senior

Johnson accepted the internship and worked within the firm’s affiliated urban agency, Team Epiphany. He worked on an intern project assigned by the chief creative director, helped to conceptualize and create a product that would engage teens regarding childhood obesity. Best Use of Search Engine Optimization in a Campaign Gold Awarded to CRT/tanaka For Sweetening SEO for PureCanadaMaple Although the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producer’s website was beautiful, consumer-focused and communicated its message about the health and culinary benefits of pure Canadian maple syrup, the website was nowhere to be found when searching for relevant terms on Google. While Canada accounts for 80% of the maple syrup production worldwide, the Federation’s website and message was invisible. Entering a year with significant news to announce, the Federation knew its website needed to be restructured, infused with a cross link strategy, married to its Facebook and Twitter pages and optimized for strategic search terms. Agency CRT/tanaka came aboard to raise awareness of pure Canadian maple syrup, showcase the product as versatile and innovative in cooking and finally demonstrate that maple syrup is a healthy, natural

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

sweetener and a good substitute for simple sugar. The goal of CRT/tanaka was to get specific pages of purecanadamaple.com ranking on the first page of Google. Knowing Google received over three billion searches a day, playing in that arena would help to raise awareness of pure Canadian maple syrup. In auditing the website’s content, the agency learned that the site’s content, while informative, was not keyword rich making the site hard to find in Google. Not only was content not optimized for searches, some technical aspects of the site’s development were not catering to the search engine either. Knowing that Google ranks web pages based on keyword relevance and popularity, CRT/tanaka set out to align and restructure the content around keywords and fix the site’s build to enhance the website’s Google presence. Already knowing competitors had invested resources into optimizing the generic term “maple syrup,” the agency’s strategy was to optimize the words relating to recipes and health, which would then align with the client’s ongoing research and give a point of difference from the competition. With its keyword research in place, it was time to think about how these keywords would influence content and site structure. Within a two-month timeframe, taking advantage of the client’s significant health news, the agency, restructured the site’s architecture and navigation to cater to specific key words and re-wrote the site’s content, page titles, URLs, heading tags and page descriptions to be keyword rich. In addition, the agency redesigned the homepage to feature more content and act more like a “dashboard,” restructured the interior page sidebars to highlight and cross link deep content and integrated social share functionality for Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest in order to grow social backlink profile. Best Online/Social Media Community of the Year Gold Awarded to Medtronic, Inc For Medtronic Thriving Diabetes Community Medtronic Diabetes is a world leading medical device company dedicated to improving the lives of people with diabetes. The company’s core products—insulin pumps

and continuous glucose monitoring devices—have the capability to provide better glucose control, which is key to living long and well with diabetes. But the therapy is complex, making education and support important to beginning and staying on insulin pump therapy. Because customers typically choose a new pump every four years and must purchase ongoing supplies to stay on the therapy, the company is equally focused on retaining its current customers and acquiring new ones. Research demonstrates that those with diabetes turn to others online for advice on day-to-day living, along with products and therapies. In fact, according to the Pew Internet American Life Project, 83% of Internet users living with chronic conditions such as diabetes say they look online for health information. In addition, a study by Harvard University and Brigham and Women’s Hospital researchers evaluated 690 social media posts on diabetes-related sites and found that 29% of the posts were by people with diabetes providing emotional support to others and 13% of the posts provided specific feedback to information requests by others in the diabetes community. When Medtronic wanted to build customer loyalty and provide educational support for its U.S. customer base, it looked no further than social media. But the diabetes online community landscape was already crowded with hundreds of individual diabetes bloggers, multiple wellestablished forums and online communities by the leading advocacy organizations. In addition, indirect and direct competitors had already built Facebook communities and Twitter followings. To make an impact, Medtronic needed to create a truly unique approach to engage its customer base while also differentiating itself from the competition. With three million people with diabetes using Facebook, the social media tool represented the clear choice for a platform upon which to build this unique community. Medtronic created a social strategy focusing on providing education and support to people living with diabetes and managing it with technology. Instead of delivering generic information on diabetes management and healthy living that other sites provide, the company decided to leverage existing support resources, inside scoop from its world-renowned leadership team and current customer success stories to build and engage a

community that would both increase current customer loyalty and build broader awareness of the benefits of its products. This is all content the community desires and that Medtronic is uniquely equipped to provide. Medtronic launched its Facebook community on April 13, 2012 with a “trip giveaway” content targeted to its most likely and loyal fans. Any customer who “liked” the page entered to win a trip to Los Angeles and visit with Medtronic executives. At launch, targeted emails and newsletters promoted the contest, while “Like us on Facebook” calls to action were integrated throughout the organization. To encourage its loyal customers to share their stories of living well with diabetes, Medtronic launched the “Let’s Build Our Timeline Together” app, the first of its kind in the healthcare industry. Individuals upload photos and stories from the moments in their life made possible by good diabetes management practices and the help of an insulin pump or continuous glucose monitor. Unlike your typical Facebook photo upload app, each story posts on the Medtronic Diabetes Facebook Timeline as a Company Milestone, as well as on each individual’s personal timeline, expanding the reach of each success story. In addition, the “Let’s Build Our Timeline Together” application generated more than 250 submissions, consistently the top performing wall posts in terms of both reach and engagement rate. Best Online/Social Media Community of the Year Silver Awarded to CRT/tanaka For Vibrant Rioja Social Media Campaign CRT/tanaka and DOCa Rioja (Spain’s most prominent wine region) launched a comprehensive social media program targeting U.S. trade, consumers and media and industry influencers and wine consumers. The agency used key campaign messaging to frame Rioja as a producer of consistently superior wines with unparalleled quality, offering tremendous value, style diversity and food-friendliness. Campaign objectives included increasing the number of Facebook fans and engagement by 200% and growing Twitter following by 100%. Further, the campaign sought to grow social engagement by reaching 100 wine bloggers, media and influencers and 1,000 trade and consumers during a

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

live streaming event. CRT/tanaka hosted and sponsored standalone social media events (Wine Bloggers Conference and Livestream event) and rewarded digital conversations and tasting notes on Rioja through social gaming platform. The overall social media program included filming a 30minute episode in Rioja, which was cross-promoted by two blog posts and live updates via Facebook and Twitter as well as sponsoring the 2011 Wine Bloggers Conference, enabling product sampling, engaging bloggers during “Meet the Sponsors” event, hosting three panel discussions and tasting events and developing a Rioja Wine Crawl with over 300 bloggers and by-the-glass specials. Facebook and Twitter played an important role as well, providing daily updates and “Like Gating,” which prompted Facebook users to “like” the client’s page in order to view wall content. Results included an increase in Facebook followed by 1,200%, an increase in Twitter following by 222% and engagement with over 300 bloggers, resulting in seven articles. The Livestream event reached 2,538 people from 10 countries, while shipments of Rioja wine increased by 12% in 2011 over the previous year. Best Online/Social Media Community of the Year Bronze Awarded to Airfoil For eBay Harnesses Social to Power Parents Pockets eBay is the world’s largest marketplace with more than 100 million members buying and selling through the platform. However, the company had a problem getting parents of young children to sell on the website. Consumer sellers represent a vital part of eBay’s business model, and parents are a segment of the consumer audience that has a large number of items around their home that could be sold. Research suggests that parents specifically have an excess of items used for a short period of time (baby toys or clothing) and could easily be sold via eBay, helping them to fund anything from family trips to a new pair of jeans. But, the perception was that eBay was too difficult and time consuming to use and this posed a barrier for eBay to recruit this group of users.

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

eBay turned to Airfoil Group’s digital and social team to shift this perception and help educate parents that selling on eBay is an easy way to empower themselves to make and save money. The agency sought to use three different channels to accomplish this—parent bloggers, web series and media coverage.

He also advocated for a state or multi-state or federal forensic audit of the facility to investigate its possible misuse of any federal and state tax dollars, while also urging insurance investigators to thoroughly examine possible fraudulent activity that would “milk or bilk” patients’ premiums.

The agency vetted 25 bloggers to determine their appropriateness for the program, identifying the best fits based on online content and extended community, affinity for eBay, region of residence and age of children. After identifying the proper bloggers, the team hosted an in-person event to onboard bloggers to ensure they were comfortable with eBay’s messaging and had the proper selling skills.

No Florida-based media outlets covered the alleged abuse at FINR during the three days that occurred between Armstrong publishing his investigation findings and Dartland’s issuance of the emergency call for authorities to act. This lack of media attention warranted the development of a social media public awareness campaign as a means of promoting community stakeholder interest and regional coverage of the investigation.

Airfoil partnered with People Magazine to identify consumers who’d persevered through hardships with the help of eBay. The team identified three consumers who had changed their lives with eBay. They developed a web series around these success stories, distributing the videos via advertising and media channels to drive video views and expand knowledge of how eBay supports families. Articles and interviews appeared in more than 50 outlets, from national to hyper-local to parentingfocused, highlighting how parents and families could use eBay as a simple way to supplement their income and make money from items laying around their homes. Media coverage included publications such as Parents Magazine, The Associated Press, MSN Money, Chicago Herald and Knoxville Times, among others. Best Online/Social Media Community of the Year Bronze Awarded to Ron Sachs Communications For Protect People with Brain Injuries On July 24, 2012, David Armstrong of Bloomberg News published the findings of his in-depth investigation into alleged abuse at the Florida Institute for Neurologic Rehabilitation (FINR). Three days later, Walter Dartland, executive director of the Consumer Federation of the Southeast, issued an emergency call for state and federal authorities to immediately send a protective services team to FINR to ensure the safety and wellbeing of each resident.

Directed by Ron Sachs Communications, the agency created the “Protect People with Brain Injuries” Facebook community. Team members posted relevant messaging on traumatic brain injury-related Facebook pages, encouraging interested parties to join the Protect People with Brain Injuries Facebook community. Ron Sachs identified and contacted influential stakeholders in the traumatic brand injury community nationwide and encouraged them to spread word about the Protect People with Brain Injuries Facebook community. The Protect People with Brain Injuries Facebook Page grew through organic social sharing as client messaging resulted in content worthy of community members sharing with their social networks. The agency team also managed the Protect People with Brain Injuries Facebook community to respond to questions and messages and keep conversation active and strategically focused. The campaign generated increased media coverage as the investigative reports and updates received coverage by top-tier news outlets, such as Bloomberg Businessweek, The Tampa Bay Times, Tampa Tribune, Miami Herald and San Francisco Chronicle. On August 2, 2012, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, the Florida Department of Children and Families and the Florida Department of Health conducted a surprise investigation of FINR. In addition, the Florida Surgeon General called for state laws to be strengthened, giving agencies more oversight over traumatic brain injury patient care in the wake of alleged abuse at FINR.

Content extended beyond those who opted-in to the Protect People with Brian Injuries Facebook community, with many posts “going viral” as 95,752 people saw content associated with the community over the course of the campaign. Additionally, as the campaign grew, FINR staff members regularly added disparaging comments on Protect People with Brian Injuries posts. These comments oftentimes appeared after hours and on weekends, requiring 24/7 management of the community crucial. Best Social Network Messaging Strategy Gold Awarded to Ogilvy Washington For Motivating Americans to Be One in a Million Hearts Heart disease and stroke are an epidemic in the United States. They represent the first and fourth leading causes of death and the leading causes of disability. Americans suffer more than two million heart attacks and strokes each year. In response to this public health crisis, the Million Hearts initiative aimed to prevent one million heart attacks and strokes within five years. Unfortunately, many people do not know that heart attacks and strokes are preventable. The good news is that many of the major risk factors for heart disease and stroke, such as high blood pressure, smoking and obesity can be prevented and controlled. Americans are already inundated with health messages, which can be overwhelming in their calls for people to change everything from nutrition and physical activity routines to medication and doctor’s visits. How can one reach at-risk Americans with clear and actionable information about their heart health? The Million Hearts initiative needed to cut through the clutter and empower Americans to make healthy choices. Million Hearts sought to prevent heart disease and stroke through a multi-pronged approach that included improving quality of care, focusing clinical attention on the issue and by activating the public to lead a hearthealthy lifestyle. Social media offered a low-cost and direct way to activate and empower at-risk Americans with life-saving tools and messages. Million Hearts chose to distribute easily understandable

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

and digestible messages surrounding heart disease and stroke risk reduction, utilizing media properties that the target audiences area already interacting with daily. Given the challenges and contexts in the heart health space uncovered during the research phase, Ogilvy Public Relations proposed stimulating audiences on Facebook and Twitter through daily engagement and launching a paid media campaign to amplify reach and engagement on the social media tools. The agency also suggested prioritizing access to easy-to-understand information by creating digital assets and leveraging existing and new partner relationships to maximize the reach of the initiative by collaborating online with other organizations (American Heart Association, Men’s Health Network and CVS) during national health observances. Ogilvy developed content calendars and managed the Million Hearts communities on Facebook and Twitter, writing 1-3 posts per day, seven days a week, which ensured consistent communication about heart attack and stroke prevention, promoting and reinforcing healthy daily choices as well as signature activities, such as the online pledge. In addition, Ogilvy leveraged relevant partner relationships and digital assets, hosting live Twitter and Facebook chats around key public health observances (American Heart Month in February, High Blood Pressure Education/National Stroke Awareness Month in May, and Men’s Health Month in June). Million Hearts executive director Dr. Janet Wright published two posts in AARP The Magazine during the month of May. Following the female-focused outreach in May, Ogilvy implemented tailored tactics targeting men, including Facebook ads and hosting a Facebook chat on men’s health. Facebook fans increased by 29,883, while during the three-month campaign period, the Million Hearts account grew by 202%, more than surpassing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) average Facebook page growth rate of 10%. Page engagement on Facebook increased, as 4.8% of Facebook fans were recorded “talking about” the Million Hearts page and page contents. Twitter followers increased from 3,700 to 5,722, while 2,090 users participated in the two Twitter chats, including the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association and the United States Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin. The chats harnessed more than 21.7 million impressions and over 3,610 mentions.

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

Best Social Network Messaging Strategy Silver Awarded to HISTORY For Hatfields & McCoys Lynn Gardner, SVP Publicity, Chris Meador, VP Marketing and Susan Levoli Director of Publicity HISTORY channel’s first foray into the scripted arena resulted in the Hatfields & McCoys and represented the latest stage in the network’s brand evolution. Since its re-brand, HISTORY has made strides to become a leader in all forms of programming, including scripted content. Hatfields & McCoys tells the tale of Devil Anse Hatfield (Kevin Costner) and Randall McCoy (Bill Paxton), close friends during the Civil War, who return to their neighboring homes in West Virginia and Kentucky to increasing tensions, misunderstandings and resentments that soon explode into all-out warfare. As the hostilities grow, friend, neighbors and outside forces join the fight, bringing the two states to the brink of another Civil War. With the arrival of the miniseries, HISTORY faced a brand communications challenge. Over the past two years, the channel had steadily increased in ratings with successful launches within the nonfiction and documental genres. However, Hatfields & McCoys stood as the first scripted program to ever air on the network. HISTORY needed to speak to their current audience, but also bring in new viewers, while appealing to the entertainment community as the show served as a launching pad for future scripted fare. Leveraging the big name stars and the miniseries’ highquality production value, HISTORY marketed the miniseries like a cinematic event through unique, high profile media placements. The idea was to create a “can’t miss” level of expectations for consumers by completely immersing them in Hatfields & McCoys promotions. A month-long social media and buzz-building campaign started in pre-production, utilizing the massive social networks of HISTORY and key talent. HISTORY decided to capitalize on the absence of the miniseries as a format—a storytelling device most networks had walked away from in recent years. Breathing new life into this genre, Hatfields & McCoys would distinctively position HISTORY as a new

destination for scripted programming while continuing to broaden brand perceptions on a wider scale. While still in production, HISTORY pitched a wide range of electronic, print and online outlets to cover on-set in Romania. In addition, targeting a select list of recipients, HISTORY sent out one-of-a-kind teaser kits (Hatfields & McCoys bullet-riddled hats) to begin piquing interest about six weeks out from the premiere. Both iconic and on-brand, the distressed felt hats embodied the grit and bitter conflict notoriously associated with the legendary American feud. A press kit followed in the form of a family album of both Hatfields & McCoys, featuring rich details of each family separately. HISTORY secured cover placements on Parade, NY Post, Tribune and Hydrogen Magazine as well as coverage in Esquire, Entertainment Weekly, People, TV Guide, The Hollywood Reporter and Maxim. Further, the network tapped Rolling Stone’s audience with the music from the miniseries by showcasing Kevin Costner & Modern West (his rock/country band) through their RS Live Program, streaming at RollingStone.com. The HISTORY special was the most-watched, adsupported primetime television event and not just once, but three times. A total of 14.3 million people watched the third installment of the miniseries after the first two parts had picked up 13.9 million and 13.1 million viewers, respectively. The day after the final installment, four different Hatfield & McCoy-related titles listed among the top “movers & shakers” on Amazon. Talent from the miniseries appeared in success stories in outlets such as “Extra,” “Access Hollywood,” “Entertainment Tonight” and WSJ.com. Most importantly, HISTORY successfully established itself as a reliable destination for premium-scripted programming, a trendsetter and leader among cable networks. Best Social Network Messaging Strategy Bronze Awarded to RF|Binder For For the Love of Chocolate Sold to the Hershey Company in 2005, Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker is the first bean-to-bean chocolate manufacturer established in the United States in the past 50 years. Customers revere the San Francisco brand for both its high standards for sourcing cacao

beans and its artisan chocolate-making methods. Since the purchase of the brand and relocation of the factory, Scharffen Berger has struggled to maintain its status. Working with agency RF Binder, Scharffen Berger sought to continue to engage its original supporters and reconquer lapsed consumers who abandoned the brand after The Hershey Company’s purchase under the perception standards of cacao sourcing and production had lowered. RF Binder worked to re-establish the brand as the premium chocolate of choice for banking and eating. RF Binder went to work, deciding to engage consumers and the online food community on a national level primarily via social media. In 2010, RF Binder launched the brand’s Facebook fan page and launched the brand’s Twitter handle @ScharffenBerger. In 2012, the agency shifted its focus from baking to confection with a more emphatic push for promoting the brand as an eating chocolate. The campaign’s message strategy operated under the overall campaign theme of “For the Love of Chocolate, How Far Will You Go?” This key message reflected people’s passion for chocolate, their readiness to travel for a specific bar or flavor fix and their willingness to pay a little extra for the brand they love. The idea behind the campaign was to playfully-challenge consumers on what lengths they would go for their love of chocolate, while at the same time highlighting the lengths to which Scharffen Berger goes to make the best chocolate and get consumers to taste it. RF Binder leveraged the feelings chocolate lovers have toward their treat of choice through daily messaging tactics on both Twitter and Facebook that played to the “How Far Will You Go” theme. On Scharffen Berger’s Twitter handle, @ScharffenBerger, RF Binder developed a Daily Retweet Giveaway, giving away one free bar of Scharffen Berger chocolate each weekday. Each day, Scharffen Berger’s daily re-tweet question probes followers to engage with the brand and express their love for chocolate and how far they would go for it. On Facebook, RF Binder wrote targeted messaging on Scharffen Berger’s brand page, driving the focus toward the company’s line of artisan chocolate bars for eating,

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

while still highlighting the brand’s baking line. Through these simple, lighthearted daily Facebook posts, polls and shared photos, Scharffen Berger Facebook fans received information about the history and science of the cacao plant, the various steps of Scharffen Berger’s artisan chocolate-making process, and the details of Scharffen Berger’s efforts at sourcing cacao beans. In celebration of Valentine’s Day, RF Binder created a customizable and shareable Chocolate eGram on Scharffen Berger’s Facebook page. Users could send these virtual cards to friends on Facebook with the option to share on their own public walls. The eGram aimed to multiply brand exposure and drive news fans to visit the Scharffen Berger Facebook page as a place to connect with fellow chocolate lovers. Meanwhile on Twitter, Scharffen Berger held a Valentine’s Day Twitter Party, inviting fans to exchange thoughts on the connection between love and chocolate, including gift ideas, celebration plans and how chocolate fit into their Valentine’s Day festivities. In addition, Scharffen Berger leveraged five prominent mommy bloggers to serve as co-hosts of the party to contribute perspectives on the place of chocolate in their lives and relationships, as well as to introduce their fan communities to a new chocolate brand. Further, in May, Scharffen Berger held a Mother’s Day Twitter Party, encouraging fans to share how chocolate relates to their special relationships with their mothers or, as mothers, with their children. Scharffen Berger again recruited a panel of influential bloggers to drive the discussion, which centered on memories between mothers and children surrounding chocolate, the perfect chocolate moment with mom and chocolate gifts for Mother’s Day. From the start of the “How Far Will You Go?” campaign in February 2012, Scharffen Berger gained over 5,000 fans on Facebook, breaking the 10,000 fan mark just a few months into the campaign and increasing the number of people talking about the brand to over 300 on average. Since the beginning of the campaign, Scharffen Berger also gained 4,000 followers on Twitter, expanding its reach and sending chocolate bars to nearly 200 consumers across the United States.

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

Best Use of Digital/Social for a Travel/Hospitality Campaign Gold Awarded to KC Convention & Visitors Association For All-Star Game Social Media Command Center

engaged in 2,100 conversations, answering questions from parking information to recommendations on where tourists might find the best BBQ. Ten percent of the event-related conversation surrounding Major League Baseball’s All-Star week featured the brand of the city and marketing language, KC, Kansas City, FanatiKC and more.

To engage with tourists throughout their experience in Kansas City during Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game week, members of the Kansas City Convention & Visitors Association (KCCVA), Major’s office and the KC Social Media Club activated a community wide and destination marketing-based Social Media Command Center.

Ninety-three percent of conversations involving the city represented positive to neutral remarks, while 73% of conversations remained positive. During the peak of event activity from July 7 to July 11, 2012 and based on the 1,911 direct messages sent, the team recorded 2.2 interactions per person, resulting in a potential reach of over 1.7 million people.

The effort focused on the city of Kansas City, separate from the MLB All-Star conversation. The goals of the KCCA team were to share its Midwest hospitality, extend a social welcome to visitors and apply real time social customer relationship management (CRM) strategies. The team answered visitors’ questions in real time as well as requests for information and that tourists remained well informed about the city’s great features and remained satisfied throughout their experience in Kansas City. Part of the campaign’s overall success is due to @VisitKC’s ability to work effectively with other civic and private interest groups, defining each organization’s approach to social listening to prevent crossover, while allowing for a scalable activation. For example, where the MLB focused its social listening teams on the global All-Star conversation, local law enforcement agencies monitored for public safety, the Airport Commission engaged on topics of safety and traveler needs throughout their facility and the KCCVA teams remained focused on enhancing visitor experiences. Each group working together enabled a citywide and comprehensive approach to social CRM practices, while still offering essential public safety and local support services. During the campaign, the team processed 78,000 conversations that included branded keywords in the context of the event and tourism related interests through content filters. The number of conversations containing core destination branding #KC or Kansas City included 52,000, while the team selected 32,000 conversations for direct review, using an advanced social media workflow process. In addition, the team directly

Best Use of Digital/Social for a Travel/Hospitality Campaign Silver Awarded to Hilton HHonors For Global Social Treasure Hunt In October 2011, Hilton HHonors launched the world’s largest Global Social Treasure Hunt to celebrate its fourth quarter promotion—Fast Ways to Free Stays. Hilton HHonors, the loyalty program for the 10 distinct hotel brands for Hilton Worldwide, offered consumers 500 Free Night Certificates in events in five cities around the world over a five-day period. Directed by Edelman Worldwide, the campaign utilized a multi-phased, research-based communications strategy to drive widespread awareness and excitement for the Global Social Treasure Hunt, both on and offline, among loyalty travelers throughout the promotion. The promotion also positioned HHonors as a guest loyalty program that provides incentives (free stays or double points) to members in a short amount of time, compared to other loyalty programs. Edelman targeted leisure travelers, both men and women, ages 25+. From this broad audience, the agency targeted a sub-audience, identified as “Status Seeking Relaxers” who are men and women ages 25-34. In addition, a careful plan was developed to create a user experience that catered to this audience, such as offering social media “scavenger hunt” tasks that could be completed quickly, which encouraged younger

audiences to participate. To execute the first-ever global social media program, the team hosted back to back events in Washington, D.C., London, Chicago, Milan, San Francisco and Istanbul. The Global Social Treasure Hunt unfolded in a two-tiered approach. First, Edelman promoted the HHonors program and grew online communities and then used a Surprise & Delight tactic to engage community with additional promotional incentives. Consumers were required to follow @HiltonHHonors on Twitter to unlock clues and tips to learn which city the Global Social Treasure Hunt was each day and what task needed to be completed to win. Results for Hilton’s “Fast Ways to Free Stays,” included 108.2 million media impressions and coverage in USA Today, Yahoo News and Forbes.com. In addition, prelaunch outreach to travel blogger, “The Points Guy” established a brand relationship that secured additional coverage around the Global Social Treasure Hunt events throughout the rest of the promotion. The re-designed site debuted on March 1, 2011, receiving an increase in several areas, including unique visits (355%), page views (415%), pages per visit (18%) and a decrease in bounce rate (20%). Visits to the site directly from Google searches increased by 514%, while due to the keyword research and website restructuring, there are now over 50 search terms that place the website on page one of Google. Further, Hilton built HHonors’ online social media community on Twitter and Facebook, gaining 1,400 new followers and 1,400 new fans. The Global Social Treasure Hunt’s dedicated hashtag appeared in 1,000 tweets, reaching 4.6 million Twitter users. The #Hhfreenight hashtag was a global Twitter trending topic during the online Free Night Certificate giveaway, which was a “Surprise & Delight” bonus to HHonors Twitter followers who did not live in the markets of activation. Best Use of Digital/Social for a Travel/Hospitality Campaign Bronze Awarded to Matter Communications For Our Vacation Home is Your Vacation Home VacationHomeRentals.com

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

VacationHomeRentals.com (VHR) CEO Tom Gilmore built his business around the fact that people want to share their vacation homes. Growing up, Tom and his sister helped his grandmother get camp ready for guests and he saw the joy his grandmother got from playing a part of a family’s incredible vacation. Now, as a property owner himself, he brings a unique perspective to his business and truly understands the “value” of a fun vacation. As the fourth largest vacation home rental site, VHR competes with giants like HomeAway, VRBO and FlipKey. VHR looked for a way to highlight its personality and differentiators while engaging with target consumers on a deeper level. One of VHR’s key differentiators is that it is a family owned business providing stellar customer support via its “Happy Rental Guarantee” and “Best Price Promise.” VHR worked with Matter Communications to create a contest that would reinforce the company name for both brand awareness and SEO, while reinforcing the “personal” experience that consumers get from working with a family owned, customer service-centric company. VHR launched the month-long “Our Vacation Home is Your Vacation Home” contest on its blog on April 6, 2012. The contest had CEO Gilmore and his family opening the doors of their Maine vacation home for a week’s vacation for one lucky consumer and seven family members. VHR asked consumers to comment on the blog post by answering the simple question “Why do you need a vacation?” In addition to launching the contest on the blog, VHR issued a media alert, included the contest in their monthly newsletter and shared via social channels. Matter Communications also pitched the news out to a handful of key bloggers with appropriate audiences to post the news or establish giveaways in conjunction with the contest, generating coverage in CafeMom.com, MomGiveaways.com, FamiliesGo!, Cake Mom and HuffPost Travel who shared the news via social channels or posted on the news. More than 1,450 consumers submitted for the contest saying why they should win the Vacation Home.

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

Best Use of Video in a Digital/Social Environment Silver Awarded to Honeywell Friction Materials/Weber Shandwick For Bendix Brakes for Teen Safety Bendix performed an initial consumer survey of parents with teens (ages 15-19 with a vehicle) and found a variety of teen driving habits and maintenance knowledge. The survey found teen drivers tend to have older or used vehicles and typically, teens have some interest in the proper maintenance of their vehicles. The survey also found that parents need more education on driver safety and vehicle maintenance. In addition, many parents were unsure the last time they had checked the brakes on their teen’s car. From these results, Bendix created objectives to generate awareness of vehicle maintenance among teen drivers and their parents, create a connection for consumers between Honeywell Friction Materials/Bendix Brakes and driving safety and to secure online media exposure. The “Bendix Brakes for Teen Safety” campaign began during Teen Driver Safety Week on October 11, 2011. Bendix conducted a survey with Harris Interactive to provide data and gauge baseline numbers, developed a series of videos throughout the year to provide teens and parents with tips and information on safe driving and vehicle maintenance and created press releases with additional information to accompany each video, leveraging survey data to support the stories. The video and press releases went to a targeted media list, including automotive trade publications, daily newspapers, parenting reporters and bloggers, transportation and safety reporters. An interactive news release featuring videos, press releases, photos and other assets provide media members with material to shape their stories. Lastly, the company created a Bendix Brakes for Teen Safety Facebook page. Media hits included parenting and consumer sites, such as Examiner.com, Earnest Parenting and The Chicago Tribune. Automotive trade sites covered the initiative as well, allowing Honeywell Friction Materials to reach its traditional audience of technicians, distributors and other industry professionals. In total, coverage appeared on more than 625 sites, resulting in 91 million media impressions.

The Bendix Brakes for Teen Safety Facebook page generated more than 1,800 “likes” since September 2011 and created an engaging environment for teens, parents and other consumers to interact with the brand and learn about vehicle maintenance and safe driving. Videos on the Bendix Brakes YouTube channel accounted for nearly 5,000 views. Best Use of Video in a Digital/Social Environment Gold Awarded to Litzky PR For “Call Me Maybe” Litzky Public Relations’ YouTube Recruiting Video While Litzky Public Relations’ (LPR) employees pride themselves on being up-to-date on the latest PR techniques, social media trends and pop culture sensations, they take immense pride in their careers and their place of employment as well. When two entry level positions at LPR opened up in late spring 2012, it was the employees who, without direction from management, decided to marry their knowledge of social medial with their pop culture prowess to create a unique recruiting video to reach creative and enthusiastic candidates in a popular social media space, YouTube. Ultimately, the goal of the agency’s video was to generate buzz about the two open positions, attract talent candidates and increase overall awareness of Litzky Public Relations in the industry. The strategy behind the video was to use the popular Carly Rae Jepson song “Call Me Maybe” (which, at the time had just started to generate national buzz) to give potential candidates a taste of LPR’s distinct office culture. From perks like office yoga, bagel Fridays and a pet-friendly office to a sneak peek at “A Day in the Life of LPR,” including some of the more mundane tasks like packing boxes to send to LPR’s media contacts, the video gave viewers a glimpse of what it was like to work at LPR. Shot on a simple Flip video camera and edited in-house, LPR’s rendition of “Call Me Maybe” cost the agency nothing to create and allowed employees to really make the video their own. Employees excited about the idea of creating a viral video, stayed late into the night to

choreograph the routines and write out the story board for the video, shot during lunch and after hours in late May and edited over the Memorial Day holiday weekend. The plan for distribution included pitching both local and national media and sharing the video with LPR’s almost 600 Facebook fans. Although YouTube recruitment videos are a dime a dozen, this video represented the first time a PR agency tapped into an emerging trend and used the social platform as an in-house hiring tool. LPR hoped the popularity of the song coupled with the unique office atmosphere and the underlying story of a small business growing in an unstable economy would pique media attention and help the video bring awareness to the two open positions and LPR’s ability to create a good media story. Once the video went live online, the team immediately pitched local Hoboken, New Jersey online and print media to let them know that LPR was hiring. Following pitches to local media, the team extended to statewide media and eventually national media, all the while tweaking their pitches as the video’s popularity increased. Before LPR knew it, their strategic pitching efforts landed the agency’s story and video on popular websites such as The Huffington Post, Mashable.com and The New York Post. In the coming days, news stations from Las Vegas to Texas featured the video in broadcast segments. The agency and its viral video even made media roundups with Miss USA contestants and the President. Shortly after the video came out to the media, LPR received over 100 resumes. The video had a direct result on the number of applications as almost every candidate referenced the YouTube video in their cover letter. In addition, LPR received resumes from people all over the world, writing on the agency’s Facebook wall and tweeting about the opportunity on Twitter (the video was a number six trend on Twitter the second day of its release as a result of the Mashable.com story). In the end, the video garnered more than 122 million media impressions and put the agency in the running for a few new business accounts as well. accounted for nearly 5,000 views.

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

Best Use of Video in a Digital/Social Environment Bronze Awarded to Weber Shandwick For Create New Usage: REFUEL | got chocolate milk? After decades of a slow but steady decline in milk consumption, an emerging body of research identified a surprising new usage occasion and a new audience for chocolate milk as an effective beverage for helping active adults recover after strenuous exercise. To change the perception of chocolate milk being a “kids’ drink” and build credibility around its post-workout recovery benefits among serious athletes, Weber Shandwick launched an all-new fully integrated program highlighting what athletes do after strenuous exercise can make a dramatic difference in how they feel and perform during the next workout. The REFUEL “got chocolate milk” “my After” campaign highlighted the benefits of refueling with low fat chocolate milk after strenuous exercise and specifically showcase how some of the worlds greatest athletes incorporate it as part of their “after.” The agency developed a series of training day videos featuring an inside look at the real-life training routines and techniques of an elite team of celebrity and competitive athletes with a spotlight on their recovery and post-exercise nutrition. The REFUEL athletics included twelve-time swimming medalist Dara Torres, Ironman World Champions Chris Lieto and Mirinda Carfrae, USA Basketball legend Carmelo Anthony, U.S. Swim Team Trainer Nick Folker, and more. The team designed a strategic plan focused on creating unique, exclusive content that delivered the REFUEL message authentically to athletes/influencers nationwide. The digital format videos sought to engage athletes online to inspire and educate them about training techniques, but most importantly, to show them that the things they do after a strenuous workout (refueling with chocolate milk) can be just as important as their pre-workout prep. For example, a four-part series featuring Torres profiled her as she “competes against the clock” to train, be a Mom and compete against the biological clock, as she gets ready to become the oldest Olympic swimmer in

2012 Bulldog Digital/Social Hall of Fame Awards

history. To date, 15 videos have been produced and distributed with another 19 planned for production/distribution through December 2012. From March 10 to August 31, the Training day videos received 175,644 views and 1,349 engagements on YouTube, including shares and likes. Within the first three months after launch, the videos received more than 48,000 total views and nearly 1.5 million impressions.