Live Blogging MITX Awards in Boston Tonight

By Dave Wieneke | in Conferences & Meetings, Digital Agencies, Search Engine Marketing | 18 Nov 2010 | 5 Comments

The MITX Digital Marketing awards recognizes digital agency and brand accomplishment in 25+ categories, plus “Best of” awards for Boston’s top interactive talent. Tonight is Boston’s big night for digital agencies.

These are my friends and industry. I’ve been part of this event since the mid-90’s when I managed part of the Boston Computer Society, which shared the early digital space with MIMC, which later became MITX.

As the day goes on I’ll be writing about a few of the nominees, winners, digital agencies, and what digital marketing industry trends might be seen in tonight’s fun.

Please comment or email me your thoughts as I’ll be adding to the post, or comment more broadly with the “#mitxawards” twitter hashtag.

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Update 4: Overdrive wins the People’s Choice Award by….Marketing
Vote early and often may have been Harry Gold’s technique, but the Overdrive leader garnered more votes than large agencies by asking for them. He used social media, and email, and reminders to staff to keep voting. As far as I’m concerned, this is refreshing. I’m sick to death of hearing from agencies with bad websites because “the coblers children have worn shoes”. Harry used his lists, the firms equity, and social media to ask for votes more than other firms — and that (along with forward looking clients tools and services) made Overdrive the People’s Choice.

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Update 3: Share Happy Ice Cream Machine by Sapient Nitro
Maybe it was the free ice cream, or the new use of technology, or another sign that device development is eclipsing web development. But it was probably the ice cream that made Sapient Nitro’s project the talke of the MITX Awards.  The project won Best of Show and Best Use of Technology. And while the machine would still be cool if it dispensed Doctor Scholl’s shoe inner soles, I think the giddy attraction of free ice cream made this one stand out.

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Update 2: Who is Up? / Who is Down?

• Mullen is hugely up.
  Their Olympus E-PL 1 “Look What You Can Do” campaign was repeatedly recognized.

  
  

  
  

  
  

• Genuine Interactive is up.
  They were nominated for tons of great work. The win is a horse race, the tons of good work isn’t just chance.

• Cramer Interactive is down.
  Two years ago they had a great lab simulator as a finalist. They’ve left the room. I hear they did a double diget RIF earlier this week.

• iProspect is down.
  Their CMO, Bill Muller, is now CMO at Visual IQ. I hear Tom Shapiro, their Strategy Director, is exiting. They ought to be a thought leader, and noticeably tonight, they were not.

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Update 1:  The Duel of Search Giants….is missing the “giants”!

Last year AMP Agency won “Best Use of Search” for its Squaw Valley campaign.  Of the five projects which were finalists, two were theirs, two were from the tenacious and impressive Overdrive Interactive, and once was from Charles River Interactive.

This year AMP Agency, Overdrive Interactive, and Charles River Interactive are back, this time with Inceptor joining them.  Its surprising that  larger specialist agencies, iProspect and Catalyst, are just absent, as are the integrated agencies  Digitas and  Hill Holiday.

I can see how integrated agencies may not be as focused on search. But both iProspect and Catalyst are members of MITX and are based in Boston. Can anyone offer an explanation of why they’d not be among tonight’s finalists?  I’m surprised, are you?