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May 2001 - Revolution
Copyright (C) 2001 (Haymarket Media, Inc.)

The Revolution Awards 200 - Best Viral Campaign

Criteria:
This category encompasses advertising, promotions or customer-acquisition campaigns that have incorporated a viral mechanism to reach the desired audience, offsetting what might otherwise have been a very high media or distribution cost. The judges considered both the overall success of the campaign and the effectiveness of the viral elements. Entrants had to show how the use of viral techniques instead of more conventional media placement was crucial to success.

Winner:
Whack-a-Flack Viral Campaign
Client: Parry Headrick, Senior Account Executive, Sterling Hager
Agency: e-tractions
Project Leadership: Steve Curran, VP Creative Development, e-tractions
Design: Steve Curran, Andy Schatz, John Lione
Illustration: Mark Fisher

To the working press, public relations people, especially aggressive ones, are known as "flacks," mere mouthpieces for the companies that hire them to spread their gospel at any cost. And when, at the end of a busy week, the number of calls to a news desk has reached triple digits, it has been reported that some journalists are about ready to take a whack at a hyperactive flack, in the interest of one moment's focus on work.

PR firm Sterling Hager took advantage of this love/hate relationship with serious goals in mind. Its client e-tractions needed to get more attention as a specialist in viral entertainment technology solutions. At the same time e-tractions wanted to increase press coverage of its capabilities and demonstrate its viral marketing products. And Sterling Hager wanted to increase the number of media contacts in its database. So, e-tractions designed a game that allowed journalists - after filling out an extensive registration form - to select a PR firm to "whack." Journalists got the chance to throw paper airplanes at various flack characters as they dodged the attack behind desks and office cubicles.

In the end the joke was on the journalists. From only 150 seed emails, Whack-a-Flack attracted over 46,000 visitors and collected more than 4,400 new individual "permissioned" email addresses of interested media. It also garnered more than 20 related articles in trade and consumer press including The New York Times and San Jose Mercury News.

Finalists:
Anheuser-Busch Wassup? Translator
Client: Anheuser-Busch
Agency: Tribal DDB

Deftones Gizmo
Client: Deftones/Digital Brandcasting Corp.
Agency: William Morris Agency/Gizmoz

Google
Project Leadership: Larry Page and Sergey Brin, co-founders, Google

Heinz Splirt
Client: Heinz

Agency: chemistri/Leo Burnett
VistaPrint.com Site Launch
Client: VistaPrint.com
Design/Development: In-house