The online bank was recognised for best innovation in Online PR and Multichannel Marketing, while also winning the Best Online Advertising Campaign category.

  The bank, which shows both negative and positive consumer sentiment on its ‘first direct live’ microsite, impressed the judges with its successful use of social media and its integrated advertising campaign to encourage people to talk honestly about its brand.   Tesco, Comet, IBM and eBay were also among the winners in Econsultancy’s annual awards which recognise the smartest new ideas and achievements across digital marketing and e-commerce.   The digital agency Essence won the awards for Most Innovative Digital Agency and for Rich Media and Video. It won the Rich Media category for the YouTube HomeProject Channel, which enabled people to watch a full feature film about the global environmental challenge online. 

Tesco.com won the award for Innovation in Email Marketing for its campaigns which provided personalised shopping lists to customers based on their in-store and online purchase history.   IBM won the Innovation in B2B Digital Marketing award for its augmented reality mobile phone technology which enhanced the Wimbledon experience by providing useful data about the tennis tournament as well as information which helped people to avoid queues.   The same technology, called Seer, earned IBM a commendation in the Most Innovative New Technology category.   eBay Partner Network won the Affiliate Marketing award for breaking away from the traditional affiliate cost-per-acquisition payment model and launching a new “quality based” Cost Per Click (CPC) payout method.   Entries were judged by an international panel from companies known for innovation such as Honda, The Guardian, lastminute.com, Orange, Mindshare, Channel 4, Google, Isobar, PHD Media, Unilever and Poke, as well as digital gurus Avinash Kaushik, Jeremiah Owyang, Sidharth Rao and Dr. Dave Chaffey.   The judges also included Econsultancy CEO Ashley Friedlein, Research Director Linus Gregoriadis, Editor-in-Chief Chris Lake, and Senior Research Analyst Jake Hird. The full list of winners and judges’ comments is on the Econsultancy blog.  http://econsultancy.com/blog/5095-the-econsultancy-innovation-awards-2009-the-winners