VideoEgg of San Francisco, California, was awarded the Stevie Award for Best New Company in the 2008 American Business Awards. Here we review their achievements in the run-up to that award.

Since its launch in 2005, VideoEgg has been at the forefront of the online advertising revolution, launching multiple new market-leading ad technologies and programs. VideoEgg was the first to commercialize interactive advertising overlays onto video, an approach that is now being widely adopted by the industry.

In February of 2007, less than two years after the company was founded, VideoEgg announced it was hosting over 3 million video files, demonstrating it had become the leading video solution for online communities. Its video ad network, the EggNetwork, had become the largest ad network of its kind, including more than sixty online communities such as AOL, Bebo, hi5, myYearbook.com, and Tagged.

By late April of that year, VideoEgg announced that the EggNetwork had powered sixty online video campaigns in a three-month time span, including campaigns from General Motors, Ford, L’Oreal, Puma, ABC, Canon, Electronic Arts, and Nestlé.

Monetizing Applications
In August of 2007, as the popularity and usage of widgets on Facebook grew, VideoEgg began enabling Facebook developers to monetize their applications through the newly launched EggNetwork Advertising Platform (EAP). The platform allows developers to earn money with the applications they develop for Facebook by leveraging the EggNetwork’s international sales team and innovative approach to online advertising.

Two months later, in an effort to foster a dialogue around the open application environments associated with social networks, VideoEgg hosted their first “AppCamp,” a one-day event that successfully engaged developers and industry insiders in a conversation around monetization and understanding user behavior for advertising in social environments.

Company Milestones
By January of 2008, VideoEgg had reached another company milestone. Through their EggNetwork Advertising Platform, VideoEgg had provided $1.5 million to leading Facebook application developers, signaling the growing success of monetizing social content. Drawn to VideoEgg’s pioneering approach, leading application developers such as RockYou, the Social Gaming Network, and Renkoo garnered a significant portion of revenue generated from ads served through the EggNetwork.

In February of 2008, VideoEgg launched the AdFrames Brand Response Network, an industry-leading program that provides advertisers a more measurable way to reach highly engaged consumers using video and rich media. . VideoEgg’s cost-per-engagement (CPE) pricing model allows advertisers to pay only when a consumer engages with an ad unit, a more valuable indicator of consumer interest than the current CPM model.  This is an approach that is helping to reframe the focus of the industry from quantity to quality.

In June 2008, VideoEgg was recognized by the American Business Awards as the Best New Company of the year. “Since its inception, VideoEgg has consistently been at the forefront of advertising and we’re honored to have our efforts recognized on a national level,” said Matt Sanchez, CEO of VideoEgg, on receiving the Stevie Award. “We will continue to focus on enhancing the consumer advertising experience while providing brands guaranteed engagement.”

About Matt Sanchez
Matt Sanchez helped launch VideoEgg in early 2005 with fellow Yale graduates David Lerman and Kevin Sladek, with the hopes of mastering all aspects of online video. Prior to co-founding VideoEgg, Matt was a managing member and chief operating officer of MediaLiquid, a production company founded by Sanchez, Sladek, and Lerman that focused on helping non-profits develop cost-effective public service announcements. Sanchez began his entrepreneurial career in high school when he founded a computer consulting group. Sanchez holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Yale University.

About VideoEgg, Inc.
VideoEgg is a new kind of rich media advertising network that guarantees brand engagement. The network is composed of over 50 million uniques across more than 200 leading video, gaming, and social network sites and applications, bringing outstanding consumer reach and engagement to its advertising partners. An advertising innovator, VideoEgg was the first to commercialize interactive advertising overlays onto video, an approach that is being widely adopted by the industry. Founded in 2005 and based in San Francisco, the company is privately held and backed by August Capital, First Round Capital, Maveron, WPP, and Focus Ventures. VideoEgg has offices across North America, in the UK, and Australia, For more information on VideoEgg, please visit www.videoegg.com.

AdFrames and VideoEgg are trademarks, servicemarks, or registered trademarks in the United States and other countries. All other brands, names, or trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

Eulogy! PR in London, England, won a Stevie Award for Best Communications Campaign in Europe in the 2008 International Business Awards.

Eulogy! was formed in 1996 by CEO Adrian Brady and is made up of talented individuals working across business-to-business and consumer accounts such as Royal Mail, Virgin Media TV, Moneysupermarket.com, Virgin Mobile, Pearl & Dean, the Audit Bureau of Circulation, and Brown-Forman.

Eulogy!’s award-winning, global publicity campaign made the opening of the Hard Days Night Hotel the most talked-about hotel opening of 2008.  With extensive print and broadcast coverage spanning the globe and an international audience of over 900 million, the hotel launch publicity put Liverpool back on the international style map, coinciding with the city’s tenure as 2008 European Capital of Culture.
 
On winning a Stevie at the 2008 International Business Awards in Dublin, Eulogy! CEO Brady said: “We’re thrilled to be the proud winners of a Stevie Award.  The competition was fierce.  This global award is fantastic recognition for the great work the Eulogy! team delivered and for the hotel.  It proves that PR can play a huge, if not leading, role in the marketing mix.”

There’s A Place
Hard Days Night Hotel is a four-star boutique hotel in Liverpool featuring Beatles-inspired artwork. The hotel is situated in the Beatles quarter of Liverpool, on the corner of Mathew Street, just yards away from the Cavern Club where the Beatles first rose to fame. The Grade II listed hotel has 110 guest rooms, two
penthouse suites, two restaurants, two exclusive bars, two conference rooms, and a wedding suite.

Each room features one unique piece of artwork by American airbrush artist Shannon, who also decorated public areas of the restored five-stor y building in Liverpool’s commercial district.

Please Please Me
In late 2007 the hotel’s management team asked Eulogy! to launch the hotel using public relations as the sole marketing activity. Eulogy! was briefed to ensure that the hotel was not portrayed as a tacky, themed venue. It was imperative that all press activity communicated the key message that the hotel was a four-star boutique residence characterized with Beatles artwork. 

We Can Work It Out
The connotations of other themed hotels made this something of a challenge.  Nor was the hotel endorsed by any of the Beatles, so Eulogy! was not able to leverage coverage from celebrity involvement.  

Additionally, the launch was originally planned for November 2007.

Eulogy! advised the hotel management to postpone its opening until February, so the launch could fully capitalize on Liverpool’s tenure as Capital of Culture during 2008.

The PR campaign started in September 2007 in order to create a buzz around the new hotel. The team worked closely with government agencies, including VisitBritain and The Mersey Partnership, to ensure journalists visiting the city as Capital of Culture were aware of the Hard Days Night Hotel as a place to stay or to visit.

I’ll Get You
Eulogy! put together a media contact program to forge strong relationships
with key travel, consumer, lifestyle, and arts journalists. The team came up
with dozens of creative story angles before and after the launch, including big
feature ideas such as “celebrity suites in hotels around the world.” Reviews
were also placed to raise awareness and maintain momentum.

It was critical to engage Beatles fans around the world. T he team built
relationships with key Beatles bloggers and websites by conducting special
preview tours and keeping them updated regularly.

“If there’s anything that you want …”
Key hotel staff, including the general manager, received media training before opening day to ensure all coverage was positive and all media were handled appropriately. On the day, the general manager conducted interviews with TV, radio, and print journalists, while hotel staff gave groups of journalists tours of the hotel and live feed exclusives were given to the BBC.

Here, There And Everywhere
The campaign generated over 545 pieces of press coverage with a total print circulation of more than 700 million. There was also international broadcast coverage from French, Spanish, Australian, and American channels, including CNN, NBC, ABC News, Sky News, and Reuters. In addition, extensive British broadcast coverage included BBC Breakfast, BBC North West, BBC Radio 4, Granada, and ITV News.

Of this coverage, over 98% was positive and over 80% adhered to the key PR messages.

Here Comes The Sun
Hits to the hotel website rose from 80,000 per week in the lead up to the launch to more than 1.4 million in the four days following the launch. The day after the launch, the hotel took 184 room bookings. The average number of room bookings per day rose from 40 the week before the launch to more than 130 per day following the launch.  

About Adrian Brady
Adrian Brady is CEO of Eulogy! PR, an award-winning integrated communications agency with a £3.6 million turnover. Adrian’s early career was in the rapidly growing Irish tourism industry before coming to London in 1993. His London career commenced with a position at database marketing and knowledge-management specialist, Conduit Communications. Adrian then moved into the PR agency world, working across a range of business and consumer brands such as Royal Mail and Whitbread. 

 In 1996 Adrian launched Eulogy! Eulogy! PR now has over 45 members of staff working across a range of B2B and consumer accounts. Industry awards in 2008 for Eulogy! include winning Specialist Agency of  the Year at the PRCA Awards, receiving a Stevie Award for Best European Communications Campaign for the launch of the Hard Days Night Hotel at the International Business Awards, and being recognized as the Best Business-to-Business Campaign for the launch of Virgin 1 at the 2008 IPRA Golden World Awards.  

In 2008 Adrian was on the judging panel for the PR Week awards, the PRCA, the ISP and the DM Echo awards.

About Eulogy!
Eulogy! is the leading Irish-owned communications consultancy in the UK and one of the top 20 independent PR agencies in the UK.  Launched in 1996 by Adrian Brady, Eulogy! works across consumer and B2B PR with clients such as Royal Mail, Virgin Media TV, Moneysupermarket.com, Virgin Mobile, Pearl & Dean, the Audit Bureau of Circulation, and Brown-Forman. In 2008 Eulogy! acquired digital agency onlinefire PR and entered into a joint venture with leading Brazilian PR agency, RP1. For more information go to www.eulogy.co.uk.

Thumbplay, Inc. is defining the mobile entertainment experience for U.S. consumers and is the nation's largest and fastest-growing provider of mobile content. Thumbplay.com features licensed music, video and games from some of the world's largest entertainment companies, including: EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Pictures Television, as well as several independent labels and artists and video game companies.

Michael Biondo is Thumbplay's VP-Customer Support. Michael won the Stevie Award for Customer Service Leader of the Year in the 3rd annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, which were presented at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on February 9.

We recently spoke with Michael about how he got his start in business, how customer service departments can succeed in an environment where they are expected to do more with less, and his advice for anyone building a customer service operation in these challenging economic times.

		Listen to the Podcast Interview...

		Read Michael Biondo's Stevie Award-winning Nomination ...

Blogs, or web logs, are all the rage these days. Each month in this space we'll point you to several blogs that we think might be of interest to you.

Gruntled Employees : Advice on how to keep employees "gruntled," and on imaginative alternatives to layoffs.
Jobless and Less : The site for the employmentally challenged.
Television Without Pity : Time on your hands to make snarky comments on TV shows? Here's your site.
Perez Hilton : Prefer to read someone else's snarky comments on celebrities? Go to this site.