Colle+McVoy’s PR arm, Exponent Public Relations, won seven awards during last night’s Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) 2013 Silver Anvil Awards ceremony in New York.

The Anvil Awards honor organizations that have successfully addressed a contemporary public relations issue with exemplary professional skill, creativity and resourcefulness. The Silver Anvil are the industry’s oldest and most prestigious awards program honoring complete strategic public relations program.

Exponent won two Silver Anvils for work on behalf of The Medtronic Foundation’s HeartRescue Project, which is dedicated to teaching proper bystander response to sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) — the leading cause of death in the United States. The nominated entries, “HeartRescue Project Rallies Public to Save Lives” and “HeartRescue Project Inspires Virtual — and real-life — Heroes” provide an overview of the Save-a-life-Simulator, an immersive online experience that lets users make virtual life-or-death choices and teaches the proper steps to follow. The Save-a-Life Simulator has gained viral momentum, training more than 5.5 million people to save a life since the spring of 2012.

The agency’s third Silver Anvil was won for the entry, “Land O’Lakes Brings Butter Back.” Exponent helped inspire younger generations to cook with Land O’Lakes Butter more often, through a digitally integrated campaign that leveraged celebrity blogger and Food Network personality, Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman.

Exponent’s fourth Silver Anvil was awarded for the entry, “International Olive Council Adds Life to Olive Products Promotion,” in which Exponent developed a multifaceted campaign — called Add Some Life — that showcased how olives and olive oil can add excitement to everyday life, to help reverse stagnant sales in North America.

The Bronze Anvils, which honor tactics within public relations programs, were first announced in May. Exponent received three Bronze Anvils for work on behalf of Farm Credit Mid-America (in the annual report category), Medtronic Foundation (in the website category) and Winfield (in the direct mail category). The agency also received three Bronze Anvil Awards of Commendation for its work on the International Olive Council, Medtronic Foundation and Winfield.

“This recognition is a reflection of the creativity, passion and effectiveness of collaboration with our wonderful client partners,” said Tom Lindell, managing director, Exponent.

Mike Schwab

Dear Marketer,
While everyone else in our industry attended SXSW as a developer, advertiser, designer, or what have you. I actually attended SXSW as your consumer. And what I learned is that your entire industry is slowly getting in on my little secret:

It’s all about ME.

Yup, you used to think that you could bucket me with a bunch of other people who have similar HHIs, genital parts and ages. You were essentially saying that Marilyn Manson, Bobby Brown and Tim McGraw were the same person and had the same values. Turns out that we all want to be spoken to individually and that technology and the digital space are enabling that. Not only do we want to be spoken to individually, we want it on our terms and on our own schedule. I don’t want to wait for episodes of my favorite show; I want the entire season and I want it now on any device (see: Netflix’s “House of Cards.”)

And I want to be the star of the show. At SXSW I got to sit on the throne from HBO’s hit series “Game of Thrones.” I got my picture taken and of course I put it on Facebook so all my friends could see ME. The New York Times made a profile of my face out of words, but then I learned that the words weren’t about ME—not cool. I visited the GE Brilliant Brew truck for a free latte and got my face drawn into the foam. I could have gotten a free latte with a GE light bulb drawn in the foam and only waited a few seconds, but instead I waited 45 minutes to get ME in the foam. It ended up looking like a mash-up of Abe Lincoln and Mr. Clean. But it was well worth the wait, Why? Because it was a picture of ME.

I was also shocked to see that brands were actually offering me things that I needed and wanted rather than yelling at me with a megaphone. Chevy offered me free rides around town through their “Grab a Chevy” program. AT&T let me power up my phone in a secure locker as I roamed the conference (while feeling naked without my phone). And countless brands gave me free stuff, like 3M post-its, battery packs and cell phone cases. The cell phone case came from a company that lets me customize and design my cover with—what else—pictures of ME.

The sessions were great, and, shockingly, they all revolved around ME. A few sessions touched on the power of humor, and I like to laugh—as long as you make it easy. And storytelling—I love a good story and you’re actually starting to learn that I would rather hear about the story behind your products than the features of your products. I attended Jonah Berger’s session (he’s the author of Contagious) and realized that you’ve started to figure out what makes things contagious. And as you suspected, it’s the content and type of content that makes things memes, not just calling them “viral” or making sure the right blogger or TV show mentions them. And, speaking of contagious, I waited in line one hour to get a picture of Grumpy Cat (and ME).

I even found it comforting to hear the stories of how Panera Bread and Whole foods are becoming more meaning-driven. It makes ME feel good when I eat there.

So keep it up marketers.

Best regards,

Your consumer (ME)

Dan Mandle

Senior editor at The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal, last year published a blog post about social media and its impact in generating web traffic: “Dark Social: We Have the Whole History of the Web Wrong.”

With approximately 5,400 Tweets; 4,600 Facebook Likes; 1,200 shares on LinkedIn; and 1,100 +1s—to say nothing of the blog commentary and other related discourse in digital channels—it’s fair to say that “Dark Social” was a sticky idea that went viral.

To me, the main point of the post is that today's web analysts are decreasing the perceived value of social interactions in their reporting by relying on tools that track visits by referral sources—tools that invariably allocate otherwise socially driven traffic coming from, say, instant messenging and email to generic sources such as “direct” means.

Other, more general implications include:

1. The notion that optimizing for social media means more than looking at Facebook and Twitter. The content itself has to be appraised.
2. Formal social networks have brought a form of structure to social interactions that did not previously exist (in as simple a format).
3. Along with the structure of formal social networks there is not only a loss in privacy, but a gain in social record keeping.

There have been plenty of counterpoints to the Alexis piece. For instance, the notion that the web has only been social since the rise of social networks (ca. 2005) ignores the fact that the Internet—of which the worldwide web is a part—has been social since its inception. Is anyone up for a dial-up chat on a local bulletin board service (aka BBS)?

Regardless of semantics about the Interwebs, I was intrigued by the notion that our analyses might be downplaying the true role of social interactions simply on account of our toolsets.

I therefore replicated the Chartbeat methodology Alexis outlined in “Dark Social” and ran a test of the site Colle+McVoy launched earlier this year for the Pedal Minnesota campaign (www.pedalmn.com).

Methodology

• Exclude Sources (relevant to the site I analyzed)

• Specific media vendors/partnerships (i.e., exploreminnesota, bringmethenews, tuneupstation)

• Exclude Media (relevant to the site I analyzed)

• CPC, organic, email

• Exclude Landing Pages (clearly not “Dark” in their nature)

• Home page (i.e., /)
• Main section header pages (i.e., /map/|/events/|/resources/|/pedal central/|/contact/|/partners/

Results

My results reflected the general patterns Chartbeat isolated with traffic data to The Atlantic. At first glance, this might suggest we need to be more thorough with any site reporting that requires us to be 100 percent certain about all socially derived visits. However, owing to other truths about site analytics and methodologies (deactivated cookies, for instance, decreasing what we can actually report as full and complete records), we will never be 100 percent certain about all such visits.

Analysts working in agencies should keep this in mind. As much as we'd like to report firm campaign results to our teammates and, ultimately, our clients, courtesy of web analytics tools that purportedly count unique visitors to your properties and tally the sources of their arrival to those properties, we need to be transparent about the fact that—unless we're pulling server logs—our data is always going to be directional.