PRWeek Awards Honor Great Communicators and Companies
PRNewswire
NEW YORK

PRWeek, the PR industry's leading trade publication, handed out its annual awards last night at Tavern on Green, where Weber Shandwick and Wagner Edstrom, two of the industry's largest agencies, claimed top honors in the night's two most prestigious categories.

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Weber Shandwick and its client, law firm Foley & Lardner, received the highly coveted Campaign of the Year award at PRWeek's fifth annual awards ceremony. That campaign beat out more than 800 entrants.

The Weber Shandwick initiative, which also took home the Business-to- Business Campaign of the Year award, promoted Foley & Lardner's team of legal experts, which were assembled to explain the details of a set of complex new corporate regulations. These regulations stemmed from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush in 2002 as a response to the public's outrage at several highly publicized corporate scandals. The new regulations, however, caused much confusion in the executive suites of corporate America. The Weber Shandwick campaign helped position Foley & Lardner as having a unique understanding of these complex, but important, regulations.

"This campaign is a great example of how PR programs can benefit organizations and the greater business community," said Julia Hood, PRWeek's Editor-in-Chief. "Weber Shandwick and Foley & Lardner commissioned research that not only provided important insights into a new business paradigm, but positioned the law firm as an expert in the field."

Waggener Edstrom won both the overall Agency of the Year and the Large Agency of the Year awards. The runners-up in the Agency of the Year category were Midsize PR Agency of the Year A&R Partners and Boutique PR Agency of the Year Kirvin Doak Communications. Earlier in the evening, Wag Ed also won Healthcare Campaign of the Year for its efforts to promote AVI BioPharma's antisense platform. That campaign was also runner-up in the overall Campaign of the Year category.

American Airlines won Large Corporate Communications Team of the Year, while Eaton Vance took the category for small in-house team.

Personality awards were given to GE's CMO, Beth Comstock, for PR Professional of the Year, Deveney Communication's Nicholas Shapiro for Young PR Professional of the Year, and Howard University's Keyana Williams for PR Student of the Year.

Burson-Marsteller, the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and the Federal Reserve System won the first-ever Global Campaign of the Year award for promoting awareness of the new $20 bill.

Other major winners included Ketchum, which took home the Community Relations Campaign of the Year award for its work with The Home Depot.

The awards were judged by 59 of the industry's leading professional. The ceremony attracted more than 1,000 attendees. Stand-up comedian and TV personality Greg Giraldo was the Master of Ceremonies.

PRWeek Magazine

Launched in November 1998, PRWeek is Haymarket's first weekly title in the US. Over the past 5 years, PRWeek has established itself as a vital part of the PR and Communications industry in the United States, providing up to the minute news, reviews, profiles, techniques and ground breaking research for practitioners. This research includes annual Salary, CEO and Corporate Surveys, as well as key industry sector rankings and regional forums. The magazine also launched the PRWeek Awards to showcase and recognize the best practices in the Public Relations industry. PRWeek is responsible for creating the largest advertising market place for products and services, as well as for jobs, in the public relations industry.

Haymarket Media

Haymarket Media is one of the fastest growing publishing companies in the USA. It publishes market-leading specialist magazines for the marketing, media and medical professions, computer security experts and motor sports fans. This program is backed by the worldwide expertise of the Haymarket Publishing Group, Britain's leading independent publisher.

Haymarket Media first established operations in New York in 1985 with Monthly Prescribing Reference. Now in 2003(4) Haymarket Media publishes an array of business, consumer and medical publications and has divisional offices in New York, Washington DC, California, Illinois, South Carolina and Florida.

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SOURCE: PRWeek

CONTACT: Christie Casalino, +1-646-638-6030, or
christie.casalino@prweek.com, for PRWeek