NO ONE CAN ARGUE that today more than ever before, interactive campaigns play a vital role in motivating consumer response and creating strong, exciting brands.

The 2010 Promo Interactive Marketing Awards honor the best and brightest in effective interactive marketing.

Winners were selected by a panel of judges composed of promotional industry professionals. Entries were judged based on three criteria: level of creativity, quality of the campaign’s execution, and the level of achievement compared with the campaign’s objectives. Each criterion was judged on a level of 0 to 5, with 5 being the best.

For more on the 2010 IMAs, visit http://promomagazine.com/awards/ima-awards

BEST IN SHOW

Campaign: Wisk-It (First-Place Viral Promotion)

Agency: TracyLocke

Client: Sun Products Corp.

Viral Promotion

First Place: Wisk-It (Best in Show)

Second Place: McDonald’s Avatarize Yourself

Agency: The Marketing Store

Client: McDonald’s

Mobile Marketing

First Place: 2009 Monopoly at McDonald’s

Agency: The Marketing Store

Client: McDonald’s

Second Place: Yamaha Watercraft Mobile Campaign

Agency: Textopoly Inc.

Client: Yamaha

Internet-based
Trial Recruitment

First Place: CitationAir Website & Collateral Relaunch Targeting

Agency: Ryan iDirect

Client: CitationAir

Second Place: Bertucci’s Customer Acquisition (tie)

Agency: Prospectiv

Client: Bertucci’s

Second Place: Nexcare Consumer Acquisition & Trial Generation (tie)

Agency: Prospectiv

Client: Nexcare

Internet-based
Loyalty Marketing

First Place: California Lottery Replay

Agency: Alcone Marketing Group

Client: California Lottery

Second Place: American Express OPEN-OPEN Forum

Agency: Crispin Porter & Bogusky

Client: American Express Open

Promotional Web Site (primary domain)

First Place: Crazy Pet Owners-Pedigree (tie)

Agency: Catapult Action-Biased Marketing

Client: Pedigree

First Place: 2009 Monopoly at McDonald’s (tie)

Agency: The Marketing Store

Client: McDonald’s

Second Place: Do The World A Flavour

Agency: Maynard Malone

Client: Ben & Jerry’s

Promotional Web Site (microsites)

First Place: Scrabble at Subway restaurants

Agency: IC Group

Client: Subway

Second Place: Microsoft Windows 7 Launch Parties

Agency: House Party

Client: Microsoft

Interactive Web Game

First Place: “Dude, Where’s my Bar?”

Agency: Threshold Interactive

Client: Nestlé

Second Place: Sum of All Thrills

Agency: Arc Worldwide

Client: Raytheon

Integrated Promotion

First Place: Sum of All Thrills

Agency: Arc Worldwide

Client: Raytheon

Second Place: Killed Ideas (by Blurb)

Agency: Isobar/Ammo Marketing

Client: Blurb

New Media

First Place: Blurb Inc.’s Killed Ideas

Agency: Isobar/Ammo Marketing

Client: Blurb

Second Place: Tweet For A Job

Agency: BFG Communications

Client: BFG Communications

Search Engine Marketing

First Place: Squaw Valley 50/60 Pass Paid Search

Agency: AMP Agency

Client: Squaw Valley USA

Second Place: Clicks To Bricks

Agency: Resolution Media

Client: Pier 1 Imports

E-mail Marketing

First Place: Use Segmenting, UGC, Tips & Info to Boost Interest

Agency: eWayDirect

Client: e.l.f.

Second Place: 2009 Monopoly at McDonald’s

Agency: The Marketing Store

Client: McDonald’s

Holiday Theme

First Place: PayPal Wishing Wonderland Holiday Sweepstakes

Agency: Strobe Promotions

Client: PayPal

Second Place: Holiday Card & Augmented Reality Experience

Agency: Fullhouse

Client: Fullhouse

IMA Judges

BARBARA LISI, president and creative director, The Planning Source

BILL HEWSON, president, Catapult Interactive

SEAN CONCIATORE, creative director, Alcone

MICHELLE PALMER, vice president, The Marketing Arm

HECTOR PAGES, COO, Brandmovers

MATT KATES, vice president, strategic services, ePrize

JIM ENSIGN, vice president-digital marketing, Papa Johns

EMILY PELOSI, director-online advertising, Office Depot

BRIAN LARDI, advertising manager, Jiffy Lube

MARTY GLOVIN, senior vice president-digital, Marden-Kane

As I type this, the lights have just flickered out in my jack-o’-lantern, which means it’s time to pore over the holiday catalogs.

Between Labor Day and Nov. 1, my household received approximately 50 catalogs. About a fifth were in the household goods category (Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, etc.), while another fifth each were clothing (Talbots, Lands’ End, et al.) and food gifts (such as Godiva, Harry & David and Hershey’s). The remainder covered a number of gift niches, such as pets, jewelry, collectibles and children’s products.

This year, we honor the season’s crop of books with the first annual Pushing the Envelope Catalog Awards, a.k.a. The Catties.

Toddler’s choice

When we returned from a weeklong vacation to a pile of a dozen catalogs in our mailbox, L.L. Bean’s holiday 2007 catalog was the only one to catch my 2-year-old’s eye. It could have been the fine selection of fleece pullovers, but I tend to think it was the cute trio of puppies in a sleigh on the cover. Next year, to get an even better male toddler response, I’d suggest putting the puppies in a tractor. With Elmo.

Jewels in the rough

Heavenly Treasures makes a play on the whole

HELP WANTED

Belgian agency wins Maxwell Sackheim Award for best DM campaign

Human resource directors must have wondered why Cyriel Van Steenbergen was applying for a job.

His résumé was impressive. But he was 84, and he looked every year of it in the passport photo he submitted.

Indeed, he claimed on the résumé to have outlived every employer who could give him a reference.

Then the directors got to the last page of the document. There was a flier asking: “Would you like to prevent your employees from having to earn an extra income after retirement like Cyriel?”

And they realized that this was no job application. It was a direct mail piece from De Tijd, a Belgian business newspaper. And the purpose was to offer a brochure on pension planning.

The mailing drew requests for more than 2,800 brochures, a 24% increase over the norm for De Tijd. But it did more than generate response.

The package also won the Maxwell Sackheim Best in Show Award at this year’s 29th John Caples International Awards in March. And it took first prize in the business standard direct mail piece (under $500/M) category. The winning agency? I Do, of Brussels, Belgium.

The title of the entry: “Cyriel (84) Needs a Job.”

The mailer was realistic in every way. The résumé was typewritten, and the note handwritten. And the flier was accompanied by an order form.

What’s more, the targeting was just as clever as the creative. The mailing went to HR directors who had placed job listings in De Tijd.

The creative team included creative director/copywriter Johan Verest, art director Laurent Van Loon and production manager Stefaan Dufoer.

A full list of Caples winners is posted at www.caples.org/.

TEA FOR TWO

Tom Collins and Nancy Harhut Split Andi Emerson Award

OK, so we’re boasting. But Direct columnist Tom Collins won this year’s Andi Emerson Award. He shared it with Nancy Harhut, a senior vice president at Hill, Holliday.

The award, which previously had never been given to more than one person at a time, recognizes those who’ve provided “outstanding service to the direct marketing creative community.”

Collins is a co-founder of Rapp & Collins, a direct marketing agency launched in 1965. Together with partner Stan Rapp he’s written four books on marketing, including “Maxi-Marketing,” the 1986 classic on advertising and promotion.

In 1987, a year after leaving the agency, Collins received the inaugural Irving Wunderman Award for lifetime creative achievement.

Tom’s column, The Makeover Maven, appears every month in Direct. In it he reworks direct response print ads. He recently published a collection of these makeovers in “How I Would Have Done These Ads.”

Before joining Hill, Holliday, Harhut held senior creative management positions at Mullen and Bronner Slosberg Humphrey (now Digitas).

She and her teams have won more than 100 DM creative awards.

BETTER IN BRAZIL

Marcio Salem wins Irving Wunderman Award

Stateside readers may not have heard much about him, but they will. Marcio Salem, founder and president of Salem, an ad agency in Sao Paulo, Brazil, took this year’s Irving Wunderman Award for lifetime creative achievement.

The trophy is given to an individual who’s developed high-level DM creative for a decade or more.

Salem’s work includes:

• The “Cups” campaign, which was developed for ABN Amro Bank. It incorporated five cups, each from a different country, to illustrate the institution’s multinational nature.

• “Lost and Found,” in which a team of artists savaged a copy of a restaurant guide, giving it a used look that demonstrated how much the guides are read.

• “Ice Block,” which encased an information pamphlet in a block of ice. The goal was to sell an IBM data storage system.

Once located in a single room, the agency now has 140 employees. In 2006, Salem became the youngest professional ever inducted into Brazil’s Direct Marketing Hall of Fame.

THE CAPLES EPOCH

A John Caples timeline

OgilvyOne Worldwide and McCann Relationship Marketing shined in this year’s Echo Awards competition

The big winners at the 71st International Echo Awards, held during the Direct Marketing Association’s recent fall conference in New Orleans, were OgilvyOne Worldwide and McCann Relationship Marketing.

New York agency OgilvyOne’s work for San Francisco-based client PeoplePC took home the Diamond Echo for the most outstanding campaign. It also received a gold in the retailing, television category.

However, New York’s McCann Relationship Marketing earned five awards, including one gold, three silver and a bronze

Industry recognizes its best at Echoes THE BIG WINNERS at the 71st International Echo Awards, held during the Direct Marketing Association’s recent fall conference in New Orleans, were OgilvyOne Worldwide and McCann Relationship Marketing.

New York agency OgilvyOne’s work for San Francisco-based client PeoplePC took home the Diamond Echo for the most outstanding campaign. It also received a gold in the retailing, television category.

However, New York’s McCann Relationship Marketing earned five awards, including one gold, three silver and a bronze – the largest total of any winning agency. The gold winner was Thousand Oaks, CA-based Amgen’s Cancer Chemotherapy Educational Support System (Access), for consumer services dimensional mail. Silver winners were “Project 2000,” Buick Motor Division, Detroit, for flat mail, automotive; and “Toughest Show in the World,” from the DMA, New York, for both flat mail and multimedia/integrated media, business services. The bronze was won by Amgen’s “Paula” effort in the television, consumer services category.

Another special-award winner was DP&A, London, for its “Wildfire” campaign for client Orange, of Hertford in the United Kingdom. It took the USPS Gold Mailbox Award for the most innovative use of direct mail, as well as a gold for dimensional mail, consumer services. “Wildfire” also earned several honors at the Caples Awards last spring.

The Henry Hoke Award for the most courageous solution to a difficult sales and marketing problem went to Lautman & Co. of Washington for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s St. Louis Portfolio Project. The entry took a silver for dimensional mail, nonprofit fundraising.

On the academic front, a team from Louisiana State University won the Leonard J. Raymond Collegiate Echo competition.

Auckland, NZ’s Aim Direct Ltd. took home the most gold with three first-place winners for client Bank of New Zealand. All three were in the dimensional mail, financial products and services category.

Of the 14 gold Echo winners this year, five were American agencies. New Zealand agencies followed close behind with four awards.

The Echoes attracted some 875 entries worldwide.