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Irish Companies Make History at the Landy Awards
While Thursday night represented a historic night for Irish sport, with Dundalk FC securing the first ever Europa League group stage win for an Irish football team, Wednesday, September 28th also saw Ireland reach an unprecedented landmark, albeit on the digital side of things.
The second annual Search Engine Land Awards, which look to highlight the world’s very best digital search campaigns, were held in New York City on Wednesday night, with no less than three Irish firms in contention for top awards at the ceremony which is affectionately referred to as “The Landies”. Seeing as no Irish company had ever won a Landy Award before, there was a cautious optimism in the air on the night.
As reported previously by the IIA, the Irish 2016 Search Engine Land nominees were:
- Littlewoods Ireland– Best Integration of Search into Cross-Channel Marketing
- com– Best Overall SEM Initiative – Small Business
- Wolfgang Digital– Agency of the Year – SEM
The night got off to a great start from an Irish perspective, with McElhinney’s, a family owned fashion retailer based in Donegal, picking up the gold for Best Small Business SEM Initiative, making them the first ever Irish company to win a Landy. Their alone time in the spotlight did not last long, however, with online department store Littlewoods Ireland picking up the award for Best Integration of Search into Cross-Channel Marketing soon after, making it two for two for the Irish contestants.
Unfortunately, a historic hat trick was not to be, as Dublin-based digital marketing agency Wolfgang Digital narrowly missed out on winning Agency of the Year. There was however, plenty of reason for Wolfgang to celebrate, as it was they who implemented the successful search campaigns for both Littlewoods Ireland and McElhinney’s.
Speaking at the awards ceremony, Alan Coleman, Wolfgang Digital CEO, was in upbeat mood, and had the following to say in relation to the wins:
“We’re thrilled with the wins. At Wolfgang Digital we’re a little bit different. Our organisational structure is our own construct. We’ve created very different policies on recruitment and ongoing training than are typical in the industry – we also have our own philosophy on effective client-communications. We believe these differences yield better digital marketing. We’ve enjoyed a wild run of international award wins this year. I see it as a powerful validation of the Wolfgang approach to digital marketing that judging panels in Ireland, the UK, Europe and now the US rate our output as the best.”
Wolfgang Digital, Littlewoods Ireland and McElhinney’s have been doing extremely well in terms of this year’s search engine marketing awards season, with all three of them representing at the Drum Search Awards which took place in June. Littlewoods Ireland were the big winners on that night, securing the highly coveted Grand Prix Award which represents the “best in show” as far as campaigns are concerned.