Effies last night

We made it to the Effie Gala last night at Cipriani’s.

Old Spice walked away with the show.

Having been on both sides of the awards — putting together the case studies when I was on the agency side and now judging them — I was struck by several things.  The winning cases all had 2 things in common.  They were extremely well-written.  And they had success standards and real metrics.  The agencies and clients involved were clearly committed to the process, their hard work showed through.  It was easy to follow their challenge, their goals, what they did and how it moved the needle.

What we all know about social media is that measuring success and effectiveness is rather elusive.  You can’t simply focus on the number of followers or the number of times people downloaded the video from YouTube.  There needs to be a much stronger connection between the new media and the real results.  It is too easy to rely on the metrics that are supplied by the sites without going the next steps and integrating them into a bigger picture.

The NYAMA was a sponsor of the Effies again this year.  The history of our two organizations goes back to the 1960s, when the NYAMA actually founded the Effies and ran the program until recently.

Here are some board members of the NYAMA:  Sarah Linden (Nestle), Katie Bartesevich (That’s Nice), myself.  And to my right is Denise McDevitt, VP of the Effies and organizer-extraordinaire!

 

From left to right: Sarah Linden, Katie Bartesevich, me and Denise McDevitt of the Effies