Awards Archives

Blender wins ‘Best in Class’ Interactive Media Award in Investor Relations category

Posted on May 19, 2015March 27, 2018 by Marika Hirsch

Time to bring out the champagne!

We’re proud to announce that Blender won the 2015 Interactive Media Award for ‘Best in Class’ in the Investor Relations category for the Silver Standard Resources website. Yes, that was a mouthful. Still with us? Because this is exciting stuff.

What ‘Best in Class’ means for the IMAs

Upon receiving the award, we were told by the Interactive Media Council (IMC), the nonprofit who sponsors the IMAs, that “the Best in Class award is the highest honor bestowed by the Interactive Media Awards. It represents the very best in planning, execution and overall professionalism”. Some of the elements taken into consideration during the “comprehensive judging process” included the design, content, feature functionality, usability, and standards compliance of the website.

Who’s behind the bling?

The Interactive Media Council is comprised of leading web designers, developers, programmers, advertisers and other web-related professionals. According to the IMA website, some featured judges represented companies such as The New York Times, Microsoft, CNNmoney, and Ogilvy & Mather.

Why we’re really excited (besides the fact that ‘Best in Class’ is fun to say)

This award for an innovative IR site also acknowledges our ‘challenge the norm, break the mold’ mind-frame that drives us every day. We don’t sit well with boring, and want to push companies to try something new when it comes to the design and strategy of their investor relations websites. (Beyond the Best Practices, if you will). For us, this award is a recognition from our peers that our way of thinking is working.

Why we’re proud of the Silver Standard project

If you have a lot of time on your hands, or if you’re just our #1 fan, you can read our in-depth case study here. If you want the quick and dirty version, our Blender president Arash Adnani says it best: “Blender made the [Silver Standard] site more of an experience for its users. We focused on storytelling education and a seamless user experience from desktop to mobile browsing”.

If you only pull one word from that quote, pull experience. Our main focus was maximizing every moment of a user’s time on the Silver Standard site. The most important starting point for us was motion. The new site needed to move unlike its predecessor. Our general visual approach was to keep it minimal but significant. It was also important for us that users were educated about the sector as well as informed about the company. So we developed a unique section called ‘Metals Fundamentals’ where visitors can learn more about the industry that Silver Standard is a part of, and about silver’s worldwide impact.

So what’s next guys?

We’re super proud of our team, and can’t wait to apply for more awards (I mean, who doesn’t like sparkly things?). But most importantly for us, this award serves to focus us in on our main goal of changing the game when it comes to corporate and IR sites. We’re happy to be recognized for our continuous drive to bring innovation to digital investor relations. Now we just want to create more award-winning investor sites. Hey, our next one could even be yours. Give us a call.

Bonus:

Can you feel the excitement through the photos?

Double Bonus:

We can create award-winning websites, but we can’t open a bottle of champagne.

httpss://instagram.com/p/24BIEfD9mo/

Blender takes on New York and the IR awards

Posted on March 31, 2015January 29, 2016 by Marika Hirsch

Last week was a whirlwind! The New York IR awards were a huge success. We had a great time seeing everyone in the investor relations community, as well as presenting the award for Best Use of Social Media. Read on to see highlights of the night, as well as the wrap up of our social media IR champ showdown.

Guess who’s back…back again…

The IR Magazine-US awards (not to be confused with the Canada awards that we attended last month) celebrated 20 years last Thursday, March 26. We flew to New York to celebrate with the investor relations community and to take part in the biggest gathering of IR professionals.We were very excited to be in New York (note the appropriate hashtag on our first night’s dessert) and appropriately played the tourist with a visit to the NYSE.

So what happened the night of?

Eventually it was time to get dapper and down to business. We loved seeing old friends and colleagues as well as meeting new faces. And the night was a huge success! We want to say a huge congratulations to not only the winners but all the nominees, it really was a special night. Being totally unbiased, our favorite part of the evening (see, we’re spelling favorite without a ‘u’ to stay on theme with the American week we had) was the social media award. We were happy to give out the award as well as a custom #IRchamp championship wrestling belt to T-Mobile USA, and to Nils Paellmann, the head of their IR department.

The belt in all its glory

The rest of the night was full of other great awards. Congrats to Grand prix winners Wright Medical Group, Ryder System, and Covidien who won for best overall investor relations for small, mid, and large caps respectively. A special moment of the night was the lifetime achievement award that went to JoAnna Morris of General Electric, who has headed their IR team for all 20 years that the IRawards have been around. Congrats JoAnna!

httpss://twitter.com/BusinessWire/status/581275225603592193

httpss://twitter.com/IRMagazine/status/581274731862761472

Another great moment was when IR Magazine awarded their president, Ian Richman, with a trophy for ‘Most Loved President.’

httpss://twitter.com/IRMagazine/status/581276441272270848

httpss://twitter.com/BlenderMedia/status/581278988351344640

Meanwhile, we wish we could give our Blender president an award for ‘best selfie of the evening’:

httpss://twitter.com/ArashCares/status/581239132162142208

We hope everyone who attended had a great evening. Until 2016!

We’ll just leave you with one more opportunity to get Final Countdown stuck in your head…

Blender’s shaking up the US IR awards

Posted on March 17, 2015May 1, 2018 by Marika Hirsch

No, you’re not getting deja vu.

The IR Magazine-US awards are coming up at the end of this month-March 26th to be exact-and we’re excited to be partnering with IR Magazine to bring something new and exciting to the event’s 20th anniversary. If you feel like you recently heard us talking about these awards, you’re right. Kind of. The magazine’s Canada awards were just last month, and if you want to know what they were all about, click here.

I probably won’t click that link, can I have a refresher?
Sure thing. The IR Magazine Awards-US was first launched in 1996, and is an awards program set up to recognize and honour the great work of those in the investor relations profession. According to the IR Magazine website, since the launch “tens of thousands of analysts and investors have voted in the surveys behind the awards”. IR Magazine is proud of the result that is “vital benchmarking information on which companies do the best IR”. In this way, those with the best work can be recognized, and others can take the chance to study their methods and learn.

Want some visual highlights?

Here’s a highlight video IR Magazine put out of the 2014 IR awards in New York.

What we’ll be doing there

We’re excited to partner with IR Magazine and to present the award for Best Use of Social Media to one of these four strong nominees:

Each of these brands holds a wide influence with a formidable presence online, and we’re excited to see who the analysts have chosen! Also, here’s a highlighted list of the nominees for the four biggest awards of the night. For a full list of nominees, click here.

What we have up our sleeve

We’re teaming up with IR Magazine to add a little spice to the event’s 20th birthday. You’ll find out more this Thursday, March 19th, but until then here’s a little teaser to get you guessing:

We’ve partnered with IR Magazine to make 20 years of #irawards extra special…announcement tomorrow, but for now here’s a sneak peek
A video posted by Blender Media (@blendermedia) on Mar 18, 2015 at 10:16am PDT

Blender sponsors IR Magazine Awards – Canada

Posted on February 17, 2015January 29, 2016 by Marika Hirsch

What are they exactly?

The annual IR Magazine Awards-Canada is the Canadian IR community’s largest annual gathering. The night celebrates feats in the industry by many exceptional nominees and provides great networking opportunities. IR Magazine states “for the last quarter-century the IR Magazine Awards have honoured excellence in investor relations around the world”.

Why they’re pretty cool

The IR Magazine awards are unique because companies cannot enter the competition or put forth their names to be considered for a nomination. IR Magazine writes that “for our awards, companies do not enter. The winners are identified by research so any publicly traded company is eligible to be considered”.

Kind of like how The Academy selects a winner at The Oscars?

Kind of, if by ‘The Academy’ you’re thinking of and thanking the investment community. “The IR Magazine Awards – Canada 2015 were decided by an independent telephone survey of more than 270 analysts and investors based in Canada”. The method is “via a combination of an electronic survey and one-to-one- telephone interviews, and canvass[ing] the opinions of the people who matter most to you.”

So what happened?

The 2015 IR Magazine Awards took place last week on February 4th, and was a smashing success. The event was held at the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto, ON.

Three of Blender’s finest, Arash, Andree, and Pooya, at the pre-show cocktail hour

Who got the hardware?

The big award of the night, or what IR Magazine called “the grand prix” went to TD Bank for best overall IR by a large-cap company. They also won awards for best IR by a CFO and best IR by a company in the financials sector. TD Bank garnered six total awards at this year’s event, and also secured their first place ranking in IR Magazine’s Canada’s Top 50 public companies list for another year.

Another big award of the night was for best IR by a CEO, which went to Charles Brindamour of Intact Financial. Some other winners included ARC Resources, the energy company, who won grand prix for the best IR by a mid-cap company, and CN, who won five awards and is ranked third in Canada’s Top 50.

What did Blender do?

We were excited to be one of the sponsors of the event, as well as getting to present the award for Most Progress in IR. Congratulations to Loblaw Companies for that win!

Here’s our page in the IR Magazine Awards program (now you can finally see what some of us look like!)

Our president Arash Adnani presented the award and tweeted his eager moment of anticipation backstage beforehand:

httpss://twitter.com/ArashCares/status/563159075630772224

What were people saying about it?

httpss://twitter.com/CaterinaVen/status/563164705926414338

httpss://twitter.com/IRMagazine/status/563141371289427969

httpss://twitter.com/q4websystems/status/563171371250106368

httpss://twitter.com/IRMagazine/status/563155701590020096

Was it a party?

Of course it was! It was a great night of celebration for all the hard work done in investor relations this year. Don’t believe us, here’s some more fun photos of the night (check out that pirate and cowboy).