Weber Shandwick bags more awards

NEW YORK – Weber Shandwick continues its award-winning streak in the social media space by taking home the Best Use of Social Media and PR Innovation of the Year awards during the 2011 PRWeek Awards held recently in New York. The awards were in recognition of the firm’s work on behalf of its US Army client and for its proprietary online crisis simulator called FireBell. The awards also affirm the company’s position as the leading digital agency, being named Digital Firm of the Year by PRNews and one of the Top 4 Employers for Social Media Professionals by Mashable.

Lawyer Michael T. Toledo, president and CEO of Weber Shandwick’s Philippine office, said he hopes to adopt similar campaigns for its local clients. “Our team is pushing innovative ideas that would best fit our local clients. Hopefully, Weber Shandwick’s two new awards would help us encourage more clients to adopt social media and accept its critical role in creating room for their brands in the digital world,” said Toledo.

Weber Shandwick received the 2011 “PR Innovation of the Year” award from PRWeek for its FireBell social crisis simulator. Launched in November 2010, FireBell is a software application that simulates public relations crisis situations across multiple social media platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, blogs, Digg, LinkedIn and Twitter. FireBell projects images that look exactly like an organization’s social media profiles, and a client can see the crisis unfold in those channels, evaluate it, and decide how to engage. This dynamic back-and forth simulates the unpredictability of a real online exchange as well as the impact social media decisions can have on traditional media’s portrayal of the story.

The firm also won the “Best Use of Social Media/Digital” award for its Army Strong Stories campaign, which was created for the US Army. The campaign is the first-ever unfiltered official military blog, bringing together soldiers, family members, and veterans over the past two years to by sharing stories of Army life and careers through video, pictures, and blog posts.

“Winning PR Innovation of the Year for our social crisis simulator and Best Use of Social/Digital Media for our work with the US Army, underscores our commitment to deliver best-in-class products and ideas that lead the industry and address client’s needs in a space that is rapidly evolving,” said Harris Diamond,Weber Shandwick CEO. “This success would not be possible without the hard work, dedication and creativity of our employees and the trust clients place in our work.”