The IABC Toronto Awards: It was the best of nights

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IABC Ovation Awards 2011

Last night, IABC Toronto held their Ovation Awards gala. It was a night to celebrate the best communications work of the past year and the people behind it.

It was one of those nights that I wish could come more often. I was incredibly proud of the people that I work with – and for – as Thornley Fallis participated in an armload of awards. Knowing that we were up for these awards, we brought two tables of the people from our company who worked on the nominated projects and the clients for whom we done the work. And I have to say that the sheer joy with which everyone greeted being recognized by their peers for outstanding work was truly special.

During the course of the evening, I saw smiles bloom on the faces around me and I got to see great practitioners and coworkers like Jennifer Gordon, Jennifer Fox, Sean Howard, Andrea Ong Pietkiewicz, Mike Edgell, and Jo Langham get their chance to walk across the stage and be recognized for the quality of their work.

It was also a great opportunity for us to enjoy an evening in the company of the great clients who allowed us to do this work with them. We consider ourselves fortunate to work for blue-chip clients like RBC, Allstate, and Rogers Communications. Thank you to Amy Woods and her colleagues at Allstate, Keith McArthur and his team at Rogers communications, and Jill Quinn, Michelle Savoie and Kate Yurincich from RBC. You gave us your confidence and we were able to give you our best work.

During the evening, the Thornley Fallis team was part of these award-winning projects:

You can follow the links above to see this work or case studies about it.

All in all, I night to remember, a night to celebrate. Thank you to the IABC Toronto chapter for sponsoring these awards. Thank you to the people I work with in the clients we work for for giving me a chance to be part of something great.

 

Work I'm proud of: Next is Now

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Every once in a while a project comes along that lets you stretch and do your absolute best work. The Next is Now video project was one of those opportunities for Thornley Fallis.I was reminded of this project when Richard Bloom included it in his favourite videos of 2010 list published on the Rogers RedBoard blog and when Keith McArthur pointed to it in a year end post on his own blog.

Keith approached us in the springtime about creating a video for Rogers Annual General Meeting. The product of this was assignment: Next is Now.

Clearly, people found it told a story they could relate to. It was passed around on Twitter, generated blog coverage and, looking at the YouTube stats, held viewers attention right through to the end.

And while it worked well online, I got an even bigger kick out of the fact that Kevin Newman, the Chair of the University of Waterloo’s Canada 3 conference, showed the video during his opening for the conference. Having someone like that use your material for a purpose beyond which it was created suggests that you truly hit on something genuine and worthwhile.

Thanks again to Rogers for giving us the chance to stretch and do some of our best work 2010. That’s a chance that I truly appreciate.