Bender Helper Impact

The B/HI digital team proudly took home the 2009 PRism award in the Entertainment Programs One Time category for Current TV’s “Hack The Debate” initiative. The event was held at the Renaissance Hotel at Hollywood and Highland and honored LA’s top communicators in a range of fields, including agencies, corporate, non-profit and independent practitioners.

Hosted by KTLA’s own Kurt “The Cyber Guy,” the night was lively, the steak and salmon were delectable and the crowd was the most raucous I’ve ever seen.  The announcers did their best to turn the audience’s roar into a polite hum, but there truly is no stopping LA’s foremost communicators at what they do best.

The night’s theme was “PR: The Next Frontier,” and throughout the event, we heard from legendary PR professionals and iconic brands that shared their thoughts on the digital space and the urgency with which communicators need to adopt the tools and practices that the 2.0 world has to offer. 

It seemed only appropriate that the winning B/HI campaign supported “Hack The Debate,” Current TV’s partnership with Twitter to deliver the first-ever broadcast integrating social technologies into TV programming. 

B/HI’s efforts successfully drove audiences to interact (i.e., hack) during the broadcast of the three presidential and vice presidential debates and tune-in on-air and online at Current.com.  The team secured an Associated Press exclusive that was picked up by more than 120 media outlets, as well as 320 additional media hits, including coverage in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, TIME, PC Magazine, Wired, Mashable, NewTeeVee and many others. 

Sometimes insightful, mostly hilarious, the resulting tweets from “Hack the Debate” made me LOL.  Here’s a prime example:

@accalon: “Alrighty, debate drinking game. Drink whenever Obama says “change” and McCain says “my friends”... Let’s get drunk!”

Congratulations to B/HI’s award-winning digital team. Let’s get drunk!

Follow Maria: @oonceoonce