The Official Shorty Awards Blog

Vote for the Best of the Super Bowl

Start nominating or submit an entry!

Super Bowl 46 is just around the corner and what better way to show your incessant fandom than by nominating your favorites in #football, #athlete and #sportsteams. 

But there’s more to the Super Bowl than the players on the field. What would an afternoon of debauchery be without the impressive Super Bowl ads that are rolled out each year? 

In their honor, we’re proud to announce the new Shorty Industry Award for Best Integration of Social Media in a Super Bowl Ad. This award will recognize Super Bowl Ads that have integrated Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or other social platforms in order to engage and interact with audiences and consumers. 

Are you the brains behind one of these campaigns? Submit for an Industry Award before time is up!

Brands and agencies: Entering the Shorty Awards has never been easier

Submit now!

The submission process for the Shorty Industry Awards has been completely redesigned to make the process simpler, cleaner and shorter. Now you can enter in multiple categories at once, save your entry and complete it over time, and add a few tidbits of information along with a picture to your new public company profile.

And the golden nugget - you now have more time to try it out! The Industry Awards submissions deadline for brands and agencies has been extended to February 17th, 2012. 

So go ahead, submit for a Shorty.

Benefit Cosmetics Wins the Shorty Industry Award for Best Use of Twitter or Facebook for E-Commerce

Benefit Cosmetics’ Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews was awarded the Shorty Industry Award for Best Use of Twitter or Facebook for E-Commerce at the 3rd Annual Shorty Awards on Monday, March 28, 2011 in New York City.

Overview: Benefit Cosmetics, a global beauty brand based in San Francisco, uses Twitter and Facebook to encourage customers to review and promote its products. In April 2010, the company deployed a “Ratings & Reviews” application on its Facebook page created by technology company Bazaarvoice, which in social commerce applications. “Ratings & Reviews” lets fans rate and review products, share their own reviews with the Facebook friends and fellow Benefit Cosmetics fans. The application also places the reviews directly in the product page on Benefit Cosmetics’ website. Anyone who reads Benefit reviews on Facebook can click on the “buy now”  button for a product, which goes directly to the product page on Benefit’s site. The company also added a Q&A section on its Facebook page so users can get answers to their cosmetics questions.

Impact: Benefit has collected 1,734 reviews submitted via “Ratings & Reviews” for Facebook, and an additional 1,862 reviews submitted through the company’s website. Benefit Cosmetics sees a 10‐times‐higher click‐through rate for the “buy now” button on Facebook than the average online ad. Benefit has more than 174,000 “likes” on Facebook and 32,000 followers on Twitter.

Gillette Wins the Shorty Industry Award for Best Social Game

Gillette’s Blade Change Challenge was awarded the Shorty Industry Award for Best Social Game at the 3rd Annual Shorty Awards on Monday, March 28, 2011 in New York City.

Overview: Razor company Gillette launched a new ad campaign in 2010 to get male customers to replace their worn razor blades on a more regular basis. Working with the firm Proximity Canada and the interactive game application E‐Axis, Gillette’s campaign utilized national television ads, online ads, a “razor repair” microsite, and a Facebook game. The interactive game, called “Gillette’s Blade Change Challenge,” invites users to shoot razor blades off a Gillette razor, aiming the blades at different items, and progressing through different levels of difficulty. Users gain points by successfully hitting objects in a virtual garage. The game also had a leaderboard displaying top‐ scoring players. Gillette gave away 1,000 free ProGlide blade samples through its Facebook page.

Impact: Gillette’s Facebook game had more than 20,000 monthly active users, while blade consumption increased by two cartridges per household annually, and the purchase rate went up 12%. Meanwhile, awareness of the indicator strip turning white while shaving is up more than 10 points, and awareness of the indicator strip turning white as the key sign to change the blade is up 14 points.

Lionsgate and The Visionaire Group Win the Shorty Industry Award for Best Viral Campaign

Lionsgate and The Visionaire Group’s The Last Exorcism’s Chatroulette Reactions was awarded the Shorty Industry Award for Best Viral Campaign at the 3rd Annual Shorty Awards on Monday, March 28, 2011 in New York City.

Overview: In 2010, Lionsgate film company teamed up with digital agency The Visionaire Group to promote the August 27 release of the horror film The Last Exorcism. The team creatively leveraged Chatroulette, a website that allowed random strangers around the world to video chat with each other. Usually the site is off‐limits to marketers due to its frequently graphic adult nature. The Last Exorcism Chatroulette reaction video campaign utilized an actress, a green screen, special effects editing, and special programming to swap out the webcam feed for a video loop. Users thought they were video chatting with a cute girl who was teasingly unbuttoning her blouse, but then she suddenly turn into a demonic presence. The Chatroulette users’ entertaining reactions of fear and surprise were captured and then disseminated on YouTube and other social networking sites.

Impact: A YouTube video showing the “best of” Chatroulette users’ reactions to the movie effect  received more than 1 million views within 72 hours of being posted online.