2009 – the end of a decade and hopefully the beginning of a new chapter. We witnessed one of the worst economies in our lifetime, lost a pop icon and wondered if our AT&T calls would ever go through, and yet we still think it was a pretty good year. As we start off a new year at Vantage Communications, we’re looking forward to what 2010 will bring – will Twitter survive? What’s the next big thing in mobile devices? But as always, you can’t look ahead without contemplating where you’ve been. Here’s a look back at the year and some of the many things that Vantage accomplished in ‘09.

Net New Clients

Even in good economic times, the reality is that any agency will end relationships with various clients for one reason or another. For Vantage, while we did amicably part ways with a few clients, we added a whopping 19 new clients in the cleantech, green, Web 2.0, semiconductor, virtualization, mobile and trade management software industries to our roster.

Expansion of Green Practice Area

As an agency, Vantage Communications believes in and is committed to the environmental movement. In 2007, we took our commitment to the next level by broadening our practice areas to include cleantech, smartgrid and green building. We extended our services to increase the awareness of pioneering new companies who have the same passion to preserve our Earth. Each year we’ve steadily increased our client roster with some of the most forward-thinking cleantech and green companies in the industry. In 2009, we took our dedication up another notch beyond providing our PR expertise to clients and became a strategic partner for VentureBeat’s inaugural Smart Grid conference, GreenBeat 2009. We also hosted a bi-coastal Vantage Earth Day event, complete with live streaming of a panel discussing “Sustainable Innovation in a Recession.”

Growth of Social Media Services

In 2008, our CEO, Ilene Adler, recognized that social media would impact the PR industry and we successfully re-launched the company to reflect our social media offerings. In 2009, we continued to build upon these services with the launch of Vant.edge, a program providing clients with social networking promotion, corporate blog development, blogger relations and more. At one of the largest green building conferences of the year, the Vantage Video team broadcasted live from Greenbuild in Phoenix in November.

Client and Vantage Awards

Awards are an integral part of our PR campaigns, and 2009 was a year of many wins for our clients, some up against large public corporations – a feat on its own.

Two of our clients, Serious Materials and Verayo, were selected for the Wall Street Journal Technology Innovators Award, arguably one of the most sought-after awards of the year.

Two clients (out of a total of 26 companies) were named winners of the World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers Awards, another prestigious and competitive industry technology award.

In other awards: Ixia won the 2009 4GWE LTE Visionary Award from TMC and Dilithium Networks’ Dilithium Content Adapter (DCA) was a runner-up for the Best of 4G Awards. ANDA was a finalist for Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal’s 2009 “Fast 70” and On-Ramp Wireless was a finalist for San Diego’s CONNECT MIP Awards. Xelerated was a winner for the Global Semiconductor Alliance’s Outstanding Financial Performance by a Private Semiconductor Company award. And rounding out the year, YKK AP was the winner of the 1^st Annual Green Design Award.

Not to be outdone by our clients, Vantage won the 2009 Hermes Creative Award for Best Product Launch and was named a finalist for the Stevie Women in Business Awards for the Best Overall Company of the Year (up to 100 Employees category) – an honor among many outstanding firms.

Vantage strives to provide our clients with top-notch, strategic public relations campaigns. Celebrating twenty years in 2010, Vantage Communications continues to produce tangible, high-impact results for our clients. Since 1990, we have built strategic relationships with editors and analysts, and more recently, with bloggers and citizen journalists, generating awareness across all outlets.

If you have to ask if your PR program is working, it’s not. It’s time to rise above.

On behalf of Vantage Communications, I recently attended the 5th Annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business held in New York City. Vantage was nominated as a finalist for “Best Overall Company of the Year – Service Business.” Our own “Woman in Business” CEO Ilene Adler started Vantage Communications over 18 years ago. She continues to grow the award-winning agency with an amazing and non-stop track record for assisting clients around the globe. Earlier this year, Vantage took home the “2008 Stevie for Best PR Campaign”.

For this most recent Stevie event, there were over 50 award categories presented with more than 200 women in business in attendance from all across the United States and globe including Japan, Australia and the United Kingdom. The evening represented a very diverse group of women with various backgrounds and expertise but with very similar goals – being successful and being recognized for their success and contributions to the business community by ‘Stevie’.

It was by far an inspiring and energetic evening for all the women in attendance as there were many great stories to be told, laughs to be shared, and even some tears to be shed – I’d say everyone left the evening a winner.

Is there voting fever in the air or what? Not only is there the much-anticipated presidential election right around the corner but the technology industry is abuzz with its own voting assignments, too.

Most recently, Vantage Communications has had several of our clients shortlisted as finalists for technology industry awards. To assist with the final selection process in determining the winners, the voting is open to the industry to help make the final decision.

Vantage’s clients are involved with the following:

Light Reading Leading Lights Awards announced their finalists this month. Although the Light Reading editors and Heavy Reading analyst teams make the final decisions, for the first time they are also taking into consideration votes from their readers.

Voting is now open for the GSA Awards to select the most respected semiconductor companies in the industry.

The Groundswell Award from Forrester Research introduces a whole new category of awards honoring the best social technologies including categories such as “embracing”, “energizing”, “talking”, “listening” and “social impact”.

So what are you waiting for? It’s all about being heard and every vote counts. No need to wait every four years for the next presidential election. These awards are great opportunities for you to decide who are the real tech winners that stand out above the rest of the pack.

We wish all our clients the best of luck as the winners will be announced later this month. So vote early and often. Voting fever is in the “House”.

PR News Platinum PR Awards exemplify the “most innovative approaches to redefining traditional PR with anything but traditional strategies.” Vantage Communications was a finalist in the Media Relations category. We were recognized for our campaign with eTelemetry to launch its new Metron bandwidth management tool. We gained national media attention from newspapers, TV stations, and online pubs by leveraging the NCAA March Madness tournament to measure Internet usage during the workday. Thanks to the Vantage team and eTelemetry for their hard work on the campaign.

At the awards luncheon, Peter Shankman, self-described as “entrepreneur, author, speaker, and ingenious worldwide connector” was the keynote speaker. Peter is the author of Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work and Why Your Company Needs Them. He warned that we are losing control over messages due to the Web and non-professionals posting on YouTube, Facebook etc. and need to be cautious about and track employee postings. Employees also need to be warned about posting self-incriminating videos. Finally, he noted that we are all focused on social media, but the social aspect is just as important as the media and we all need to keep in mind the personal side of business relationships.

The lesson of the day—There are many innovative ideas in PR, including from Vantage and rather than getting hooked on buzzwords such as social media or blogs, focus on having good campaigns that take risks rather than the same old, same old.