Why should the media and bloggers have a monopoly in recapping last year’s events? Though most Vantge Points posts are about thought leadership, we want to get in on the action too. So here is the very first Vantage Communications Year in Review.

Despite a very challenging economic environment, it was a year of continued success for our clients as well as for our agency. Some of the 2008 highlights are recapped below: 

1. We re-launched the company as Vantage Communications with a new website and our Vantage Points Blog. 

2. 10 new clients joined our client family. This reflected strong growth in green building PR and social media.  We are also proud that 10 of our clients have been with us for over 2 years.

3. Multiple clients received recognition as recipients of elite awards including Wall Street Journal’s 2008 Technology Innovation Award,Aspen Institute for Innovation in Energy Conservation, Deloitte & Touche Technology Fast 50, Light Reading’s Leading Lights Award, eWeek Top 10 Products of 2008 and Popular Science Best of What’s New.
4. Vantage Communications also cleaned up on awards with the Stevie Award for Best PR Campaign and finalists for Platinum PR Award, Sabre Award and Stevie Award for Best Company.
5. Our clients were consistently featured in top tier publications. Please check out our best of coverage which includes Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, NY Times, Fast Company, Forbes, CBS, ABC, FORTUNE, WIRED, and USA Today.
6. As an innovative communications company, we’ve truly embraced social media. Our staff is active on Facebook and Twitter and 18 people contributed to Vantage Points.
7. Vantage expanded its client services to include more new media capabilities such as video production & editing and audio podcast support, completing several client projects during the year.
8. Company-wide Vantage has added new green initiatives across its offices. It is important to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

We are very proud of our 2008 accomplishments. We could not have achieved what we did without the support of our clients and the members of the Vantage ecosystem. For this, we are truly thankful. We have more innovations in store for 2009. But for now, here’s a toast to our clients, our team, our partners, and the new companies we’ll partner with in 2009!

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.

We knew we had devised a pretty spectacular PR campaign when it came to creating a way for our client eTelemetry to gain coverage for its newest bandwidth management tool, but last week the Stevie awards announced it to the world by naming us a winner for the best PR Campaign! Our NOW award winning product launch centered around eTelemetry’s new bandwidth management tool (a way to track employees internet usage) and the much anticipated live online streaming of the 2007 March Madness NCAA basketball tournament. With March Madness already a much publicized event, we were able to garner phenomenal coverage from such heavy hitters as the Washington Post and ABC News. Find out all the juicy details here!

We are overjoyed to have won this award, since we had some very stiff competition in our award category (check them out!). We hope this award is just another fine example to our clients on how we aim to provide the best, by both devising and implementing unique, tailored made PR campaigns.