Winner: GE – GE ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid
On July 13, 2010, in partnership with the four leading venture capital firms, GE launched the $200 million ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid campaign to change the way we create, connect and use power. It offers investment and commercial relationship opportunities to find, fund and bring to scale the best ideas from innovators, technologists, small businesses and students, as well as five $100,000 innovation award winners. Through the Challenge site, earned and paid media outreach, and social media tools like Facebook and Twitter, the Challenge engaged and informed a broad audience about GE’s leadership and commitment to innovative clean energy technology. Powering the Grid launch was strategically held in San Francisco to capitalize on the strong clean technology press and blogger presence. Additional Challenge events were held in Germany, Japan, France, Korea, Australia and Canada. —BM
Honorable Mentions:
American Airlines and Weber Shandwick – American Airlines and the oneworld Alliance Win the Battle for Japan Airlines: When American Airlines was in jeopardy of losing Japan Airlines to rival Delta, Weber Shandwick quickly mobilized resources across the globe for a multifront corporate crisis campaign.
Cohn & Wolfe – AIDS Treatment for Life International Survey (ATLIS 2010): Cohn & Wolfe created the AIDS Treatment for Life International Survey, a platform for the delivery of key Merck messages with breakthrough information meaningful to HIV/AIDS patients.
Euro RSCG Worldwide PR – Wyclef for President: Euro RSCG devised a communications strategy for musician Wyclef Jean, who ran for president of his home country, Haiti. Jean was humanized by personal letters and op-ed pieces addressing his true goals.
Financial Times – Pioneering the Metered Model: As the media industry moved to a new position of acceptance of paid content—which the Financial Times adopted in 2007—a PR campaign was launched tor ensure that FT received credit for pioneering the model.
LinkedIn - LinkedIn’s Global Professional Buzzwords: LinkedIn’s comms team orchestrated a creative consumer PR and social media campaign which revealed the most overused professional buzzwords around the world.
Ogilvy PR Worldwide, Beijing – Pambassadors: To combat the anonymity of Chengdu, Ogilvy PR researched the city’s offerings in person and selected the Giant Panda as the icon that best represented Chengdu’s self-image.
Waggener Edstrom - Year of IE9: Launching a More Beautiful Web: In close partnership with Internet Explorer 9 engineers and marketing, Waggener Edstrom developed a yearlong campaign that turned critics into advocates.
Weber Shandwick New York - Honeywell-Nobel Laureate Lecture Series: To close a critical gap in young adults pursuing careers in STEM fields, Honeywell targeted 19 universities with a program that lets students interact with Nobel Laureates in chemistry and physics.