4th Annual Vibrant Awards 2011 Finalists Announced

LONDON, October 14, 2011 -

Vibrant, the global leader in premium contextual advertising, announces today the shortlist for its annual Vibrant Awards 2011.  The international event, in its fourth year, recognises the best contextual advertising campaigns from the world’s top brands, submitted by brand marketers and agencies.

Each nominee is evaluated by an expert panel of global industry luminaries. The winners of the UK Awards will be announced on Thursday, 27 October 2011.

The Vibrant Awards 2011 campaigns are split into Gold and Silver awards under Global and UK.  The UK has one campaign shortlisted for the Vibrant Global Awards Jeep/Maxus; eight campaigns are under consideration for the UK Awards for a Gold and Silver place.

The Vibrant Awards UK finalists are:

Rimmel, Coty                    - OMD
Jeep                            - Maxus
Unilever, Flora Pro.Activ       - Mindshare
Amex                            - NEO
Footlocker                      - OMD
Channel Four, The Inbetweeners  - MediaCom
Unilever, Comfort Brights       - Mindshare
Unilever, Lynx Dry Deodorant    - Mindshare

The Vibrant Awards Global finalists are:

Jeep                      - MAXUS     (UK Campaign)
Chrysler LLC              - Universal McCann
Unilever AXE              - Deo/Mindshare
Vodafone D2 GmbH          - Media Team OMD
P&G Crest                 - Starcom MediaVest

“The world’s top brands recognize the power of contextual advertising to drive engagement and campaign performance,” says Cella Irvine, CEO of Vibrant. “We are honoured to work with brands such as Jeep, IBM and Crest to leverage the best-in-class creative and technology to create industry-leading innovation. Our all-star panel of judges now face the challenging task of choosing the ultimate winners from an incredible list of finalists in the fourth annual Vibrant Awards.”

Martin Forbes, Senior Vice President & MD Europe of Vibrant, adds, “The Vibrant Awards give us an opportunity to recognise brands for their inventive use of contextual advertising and creative thinking, but importantly, they are able to draw inspiration from one another, seeing how these brands continue to innovate in the space, moving the industry forward,”

Marketers and the public are encouraged to cast their own votes online from 14 October as www.vibrantawards.com and to join in the Twitter conversation at #vibrantawards.  

The campaigns are evaluated on three criteria: 1) The creativity and contextual relevancy of a campaign strategy; 2) How contextual advertising effectively communicates the brand message and meets campaign objectives and 3) How contextual advertising brings value to the campaign.

The 2011 expert panel of UK Judges includes:

• Cat Agostinho, Senior Digital Planning Director, OMD
• Miltos Lazarides, Business Director, Neo
• Sophie Sheppard, UK Lead Express Seller and Mid Market advertising, IBM
• Giles Hall, Parternships Manager at Microsoft Advertising
• Nick Bradley, Commercial Development Director at IPC Media
• Malcolm Attwells, Commercial Director at Glam Media UK

About Vibrant

Vibrant is a world leader in contextual technology aligning billions of words across the internet with relevant video, information, tools and advertising.  With over 6,000 premium publishers, reaching more than 250 million unique users per month (comScore, 2011), Vibrant gives top brand marketers the opportunity to deliver highly targeted advertisements within premium Web content and offers publishers premium editorial tools to re-circulate users throughout their websites.  Vibrant clients include Microsoft, General Motors, Unilever, Sainsbury’s and Hewlett Packard.

The company, founded in 2000, has offices in London, New York, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Paris, Hamburg, Munich and Dusseldorf.   Vibrant has featured in the Inc. 500 and Deloitte Fast 50 lists, and in the UK: Media Momentum 2006, 2007; 2008 and Sunday Times Tech Track in 2004 and 2005.  www.vibrantmedia.co.uk or www.hyperlinkevolved.com or ww.facebook.com/vibrantmedia or twitter.com/vibrantmedia.

Contact Vibrant UK: Helen Mussard, Senior European Marketing Manager: +44(0)207-239-0102/Helen.mussard at vibrantmedia.com
Lorette Nettar, PR: +44(0)7968-521-684 / lorette.nettar at vibrantmedia.com