Brilliant Ad
October 4, 2011 at 10:07 pm
From Blinder Commercials that has won many awards. Check out their channel (scroll past the awful tacky Club O ad) – they are the guys behind all the decent ads in this country!
More Tumbleweed…
June 21, 2011 at 11:53 am
I’m putting together slides for a talk I’m giving next week. Examples permeate the web on US brands doing it with social. I want to give some good meaty Irish ones, so I decided to check out the winners of the recent Irish Social Media Awards to see what they’re up to.
Loving Dublin Zoo. And Meteor.
But Maltesers? Where are you?
You won the “Best Integrated Campaign” but obviously the integration bit stopped a long time ago. The “About” section is still referring to Winter – and yes I know we’re not having a great summer, but that is two seasons out of date. If you click on “Maltesers Ireland” to see what they have been saying, it’s obvious that their agency is on a once a month retainer to post since the end of March. Before that it was a daily post, now it’s just slipped off into nothingness.
This is another great example of how people just don’t get it that “social media is for life and not just for a campaign”. The sooner we start living in terms of conversations that are ongoing, rather than campaigns that die off, the better.
I’m off to find me some good US social media examples…
In the meantime, here’s some well meaning words from Malteser’s social representatives in Ireland… it’s so… touching.
Zero Points
May 27, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Alas! I have to report that we didn’t take home any awards at last night’s Social Media Awards. They haven’t updated the site yet with the winners, but from memory eircom won on customer service, Vodafone won something, and Meteor won something else as well! We particularly liked the Men in Uniform (Army) who picked up the Best State Body Social Award.
It was a great night, the Round Room in the Mansion House is beautiful – it was good to be back there after all these years. 
It was good to see lots of friendly faces who I haven’t seen in a while – ’twas my first awards night in a year or two, and yes, people still know how to party good!!
Well done to everyone involved and all those who won.
Social Media Awards Finalist
May 25, 2011 at 3:57 pm
Tomorrow night it’s a dust down the oul’ gúna, invest in a blow dry and put on my best razzle dazzle smile, for it’s awards time again! And this time, me and my team are up for not 1, not 2, not 3… OK let’s try and be a little humble here… 6 awards at the inaugural Social Media Awards.
For the last 18 months or so, I’ve been working with the great team at Tourism Ireland in the role of Social Media Project Manager. It’s a great team to work with because of the vision for embedding social media firmly within the organisation’s every activity, the professionalism of everyone working there, the fun we have, and of course the great results achieved. I work closely with Maxmedia who develop content, Betapond who have developed quite a few apps, gem the contact centre and Radical on media buy. When I began at the end of 2009 Tourism Ireland had a handful of Facebook fans, Twitter wasn’t really happening, and there was no blog.
Now we communicate daily with over 365,000 fans, have several Twitter streams on the go, blogs in English, Spanish, Italian, and French – which are all great – go and read the English language blog. We develop plenty of apps to keep our fans happy and a very impressive social game called Ireland Town to mark St Patrick’s Day. Currently the UK team has a couple of bloggers in Ireland whose trip is being fuelled by Facebook fan’s directions. There are 3 promotions running that offer great prizes and facilitate data capture. And fresh off the block just today is the latest app that is focused on capturing user generated content – Ireland Holiday Stories app. If you have a great story to tell about a trip you took in Ireland, why not come on over and share it with us?
So, tomorrow night, we’re up for an award in pretty much every category we could enter! If we don’t pick up at least one piece of foam I’ll be very disappointed! If you’re going to the awards tomorrow night, come on over and say hi. I haven’t been out to one of those gigs in quite a long time, so it’ll be great to see some old faces again.
Facebook Page for a Non-Profit Organisation
Integrated Facebook Campaign (Page, App and Ads)
Best Twitter Account – Support, CRM
Integrated Facebook Campaign (Page, App and Ads)
Use of Social Media by State Body/Org
Customer Care using Social Media (Integrated)
Innovative Use of Social Media
I Got A Gold Medal
February 26, 2010 at 10:41 am
Last night this here blog won gold!! A very pleasant surprise indeed. We’d made it to the finalists at the 2010 Digital Media Awards in the Best Blog Category, but I really didn’t expect to get anywhere. Imagine my surprise this morning when I saw on the wires that we’d won a Gold Medal – came second.
The award went to Ronan Lyons and well deserved too. Check out his blog – it’s economic commentary and analysis – bleak reading, but tells it like it is. I commend Ronan because it must take a fair bit of time to put the thought and research in that he so obviously does. I also have a little snigger every time I see his name in print because my madser nephew who is 5 is also called Ronan Lyons. His larger than life personality kind of supercedes any impression of thoughtful economic analysis!
I was also glad to see Kavaleer win in the Best Animation category. I’ve been working with them recently on developing a social media strategy for their kids cartoon Garth & Bev. Check out the blog here. All design lovingly created by CookieWeb.
Tags: digital media awards 2010, social media strategy garth & bev
Ireland Goes To The Webbys
October 16, 2009 at 6:19 pm
To all of you who made it to the shortlist of the Irish Web Awards – congratulations. Be proud.
Have you considered entering the Webby Awards?
The Webby Awards are the global web awards that have been running for nigh on 14 years now. They celebrate all that is great about online. The Oscars of the Web World. And I think it’s high time that Irish sites got in it.
If you enter before 30 October, it costs $255 to enter a site. That’s €171.
Cars Ireland – you won the Best Practice Award last weekend. Did you know there’s an entire category dedicated to you (Automotive) in the Webbys?
Beaut.ie – you could be adding a hint of a blush if you were representing Ireland in the Webbys in the Best Beauty & Cosmetics Category.
The guys at Look & Taste would cook up a storm in the Food & Bev category. Think of the global exposure to make it to the shortlists guys…
There’s a much wider range of categories than any Irish award ceremony has. I went to the Awards in 2007 and that was the first year that Online Film & Video and Mobile got their own awards night to handle all the various sections within those. We have such cool start-ups located all round this island. I really believe it’s high time we dust off the ‘ah sure we’re Irish we’d never stack up against the Americans’ attitude and give them a run for their money.
Because money is involved.
That’s the main barrier unfortunately, because let’s face it, not many start-ups have a spare €171 lying around. A couple of years ago I had managed to get a large Irish corporate involved in sending the cream of the Irish to the Webbys. We were going to ask you to vote for who you think should represent us in New York, and the mobile phone company was going to pay for it.
Sadly the organisers of the Webbys didn’t like it. No not one bit. They felt that this would put off potential entrants from independently entering. So, they blocked us from running this super promotion and instead have seen dribs and drabs of Irish entrants instead of the huge numbers we would have delivered instead.
That aside, get on there now, dust off your reservations and enter the 14th Webby Awards. If you get shortlisted, I’ll come and cheer you on in NYC!
Tags: Irish Web Awards Winners, Webby Awards, Webbys
Most Accessible Website Award
October 12, 2009 at 8:49 am
Last week was a brilliant one. It began with a win on Monday for an amount of money that I’d been waiting for since July 2008. Quite a hefty sum too, nice to receive it in time for me to hand it straight over to the Revenue.
On Wednesday, a new maternity hospital opened in Malawi. This was the result of five years of hard work on the part of The Rose Project. That Irish charity fundraised and built a maternity hospital to help a country that is on its knees with some basic healthcare. It’s definitely something that we Irish can be proud of as The Rose Project is a small charity set up and run by Irishwoman Mary Donohue. It’s not in the media everyday. But it works hard and does great things. The hospital was opened by another Irishwoman we can be proud of – Dr Mary Robinson.
To cap it all off, on Saturday night at the Irish Web Awards, The Rose Project website won the award for Most Accessible Website in Ireland. This is the second year in a row that a site by Brightspark has won such a prestigious and coveted award. We’re delighted that our work is being recognised by the judges of the Web Awards and really pleased too that it brings further coverage to The Rose Project. Congratulations to The Rose Project on the win.
It’s notable that out of 22 awards handed out on the night, 9 were won by what I would deem to be ‘small’ organisations who obviously chose well in how to spend their limited budgets. The other 13 were won by well-funded organisations or semi-state bodies – the likes of The Irish Times, RTE, IDA. I’m delighted to see that publicly funded websites in Ireland have improved so much. At the same time, I’m really proud for the people behind the following sites who really are living the ethos of today – to get more with less:
- Best Site in Irish Language – Nos Magazine
- Best Social Media Campaign - Count Me Out
- Most Beautiful Website in Ireland – Organic Supermarket
- Best Ecommerce - Curious Wines
- Most Innovative – Decisions for Heroes
- Best New Web App – Kildare Street
- Best Music – Nialler9
- Best Videocaster – Look & Taste
- Best Podcaster – The Persuaders
With the global web awards, the Webby Awards early closing date of 30 October 2009, I would strongly urge all the winners and indeed the shortlisters at Saturday night’s awards to enter the Webby Awards. Put Ireland on the global web awards map. Enter here.
Tags: Irish Web Awards 2009, Most Accessible Website in Ireland, Webby Awards
Brightspark Shortlisted for Web Awards
September 24, 2009 at 10:48 am
Delighted to see we’ve been shortlisted three times for two categories in the 2009 Irish Web Awards:
- Most Beautiful Website in Ireland – for our work on The Rose Project
- Most Accessible Website in Ireland – for our work on The Ability Awards and for The Rose Project.
My thanks to the judges who have deemed us worthy of getting this far. We’re in great company so I’m pretty pleased to make it to the shortlist.
Winners will be announced on 10 October.
Tags: Irish Web Awards 2009, Most Accessible Website in Ireland, most beautiful website in ireland
Vote Early, Vote Often
June 25, 2009 at 2:41 pm
The inaugural Techcrunch Europe Award nominees have been announced and there are plenty of Irish companies in there. It’s a public vote, so head on over and keep the flag flying for a lot of great apps and businesses.
The Irish are:
- Decisions For Heroes, Best Social Innovation (which benefits society), (Vote Here)
- Mobanode, Best Mobile Startup, (Vote Here)
- LouderVoice, Best Web Application Or Service, (Vote Here)
- Joe Drumgoole, Best Startup Founder(s), (Vote Here)
- Dial2Do, Best Mobile Startup, (Vote Here)
- Locle, Best Mobile Application, (Vote Here)
- MuzuTV, Best Entertainment Application or Service, (Vote Here)
- CoClarity, Best Enterprise/B2B Startup (Vote Here)
Good luck to you all. You’ll be getting my votes – all 468 of them!
Tags: Techcrunch Europe Award, Web2Ireland
Best Blogger | Net Visionary Awards
April 17, 2009 at 9:38 am
I’ve been shortlisted as Best Business Blogger at this year’s Net Visionary Awards. Hurray. And thanks to the judges for letting me get this far. I’ve been outspoken in the past about how I think the Net Visionary awards are a bit of a ‘how large is your list’ competition, so they’re very nice indeed for letting me get through to this stage.
Congrats too to the others who are shortlisted: Puddleducks, Mulley Communications, Murphys Ice Cream, and Peter Donegan Landscaping.
Vote for Brightspark blog. You can do it anytime before 30 April.
3 Reasons Why You Should Vote For Brightspark Blog
- It’s the longest running blog on the list. I’ve been happily blogging here since 2003. In web years, that’s like 47 years old.
- The only chick blogger on there. “Jobs for the girls” and all that…
- This blog is the only one that’s been shortlisted for both the Irish Blog Awards business category and the IIA’s.
Until we won large at the Irish Web Awards, I’d always felt a bit ‘always the bridesmaid never the bride’ at awards ceremonies. Good enough to get there, but not good enough to win. So here’s your chance to bring a smile to my face this May. Vote now. Tell your friends to vote.
And thank you.
