Public Relations Awards

Gravitas Communications is a strategic communications firms that operates at the nexus of public relations, Social Media and Search Engine Optimization. Founded in 2005 by Jocelyn Johnson, Gravitas won a Stevie Award for Communications or PR Campaign of the Year in the 2010 Stevie Awards for Women in Business.  This public relations award was accepted by Jocelyn Johnson at the ceremony in New York on November 12, 2010.  See her acceptance speech here.

Gravitas won their 2010 Stevie for their campaign entitled "Motor Trend 2010 Car of the Year: Good News for US Automaker."  As Gravitas reported in their winning nomination:

"There was a poignancy associated with the winner of the 2010 Car of the Year award – the Ford Fusion.  As the nation and the world worried whether Detroit could be saved, it seemed fitting that the oldest and strongest of the “Big Three” would emerge triumphant among the global field of contenders. Gravitas Communications was tasked with launching a campaign for the 2010 award that would reach new levels of coverage and serve as a positive and motivating boost to the American auto market – but with half the budget compared to prior years.  The goal was to appeal to a mass audience, with the widest possible national
and international media coverage.  The Gravitas team architected a comprehensive publicity plan that efficiently reached the broadest audience possible and was inclusive of all major communications channels including: print, television, radio, web, social media and online video. "

The results of the winning campaign (as of early October 2010) included:

- 1200 Tweets
- 175 Television hits
-  400 online articles
-  4187 streams on the Webcast - 6x more than we hoped for; currently 17,100 views on YouTube
- The Contender video has garnered more than 67,000 views on YouTube
- Live broadcast on FoxBiz
- Nationally syndicated Associated Press article; front page of FoxNews.com ,
CNBC.vom, MSNBC.com, CNN.com, USA Today.com, Yahoo.com
- MotorTrend.com broke a million page views overall, only the second time the site has achieved that level of traffic

The next opportunities to win PR awards in Stevie Awards programs?  The PR awards categories of The 9th annual American Business Awards, and the PR awards categories of The 8th annual International Business Awards.

From scottgdouglas on twitter:

RT @cipr_scotland: The full list of winners from last night's glittering Scottish PR awards - http://ow.ly/34OTn (http://twitter.com/scottgdouglas/statuses/448484494811136)

Congratulations to all the winners in this year's Scottish PR awards.  Don't forget to nominate in public relations awards and communications awards categories in The 2011 International Business Awards!

Now that we're coming to the end of 2010 and we look back over the Stevie Award winners for the year, it's apparent that Weber Shandwick truly is the agency of the year for its haul of pr awards.

The agency won the Stevie for Public Relations Agency of the Year in The 8th annual American Business Awards back in June in New York.  You can read the full-text of their Stevie-winning nomination on the ABA web site.

Weber Shandwick Europe then won the International Stevie for Public Relations Agency of the Year in Europe in The 7th annual International Business Awards, which were presented in Istanbul, Turkey on September 27.  That award was accepted by Rose de la Pascua, Chair of Weber Shandwick Spain and Executive Vice President for Continental Europe.  Read the full-text of Weber Shandwick Europe's Stevie-winning entry on the IBA web site.

Members of the Weber Shandwick network around the world also won honors in Stevie Awards's public relations awards categories in 2010, including among others AC Sanafor in Finland, McCann PR in Romania, Corporate Weber Shandwick in India, and Weber Shandwick in Dallas, Texas among others.

In addition, the agency won a raft of other awards in 2010.

So who'll be the Stevies' agency of the year in 2011?