NEW YORK—It was a good night for Ketchum and Edelman at the North American SABRE Awards dinner, with the former taking home six Gold SABRE Awards and picking up the Platinum SABRE for the best public relations campaign of 2011, and the latter adding Agency of the Year to its haul of five Gold and Diamond awards.
Other multiple winners included Weber Shandwick, which took home five Gold and Diamond trophies; and Burson-Marsteller and Citizen Paine, who took home four apiece. On the client side, IBM and its agencies won three Gold awards.
Ketchum’s “IBM at 100” anniversary campaign for IBM was selected by the SABRE judges as winner of the Platinum SABRE Award for the best public relations campaign of 2011, ahead of four finalists: the Starbucks Brand Transformation (Starbucks with Edelman); the Fighting Fire crisis communications effort conducted by Ogilvy Public Relations for the Mexico Tourism Board; the Old Spice “Mano a Mano in el Bano” campaign (Citizen Relations); and Weber Shandwick’s “Closing the Perception Gap” campaign for General Motors.
Edelman, our Large Agency of the Year, beat out Citizen Relations (Midsize Agency of the Year), Mitchell Communications Group (Small Agency) and Catalyst (Boutique Agency) to win our Agency of the Year award for the Americas region.
Rbb Public Relations, our Best Small Agency to Work For, triumphed over Waggener Edstrom (Best Large Agency to Work For), Text 100 (Midsize Agency) and Revive (Boutique Agency) to win our overall Best Agency to Work For trophy.
A full list of Gold and Diamond winners can be found here.