Iris Experience takes centre stage at Event Awards

Congratulations to Iris Experience, who walked away with the top prize at this year’s Event Awards.
The agency, whose clients include Sony Ericsson, Sony Electronics, PlayStation, Amnesty International and Unilever, was placed in four other categories at this year’s ceremony.

Iris won Creative Event of the Year for Sony Ericsson Night Tennis and Best Brand Activity at a Festival or Public Event for Ibiza Rocks with Sony Ericsson. It also achieved two finalist spots for Best Brand Experience Campaign and Agency of the Year.

The Event Awards 2008, organised by Haymarket Events and my former employer Event magazine took place on 26 September at London’s Hilton Hotel, Park Lane. Some 600 guests gathered to see trophies handed out in 24 categories ranging from venue awards to Caterer of the Year and Exhibition Organiser of the Year.

Winners included GSP for Agency of the Year, Brand Events for Exhibition Organiser of the Year, Zafferano for Caterer of the Year and Private Drama Events for Entertainment of the Year.
The Innocent Village Fete, which takes place annually in Regent’s Park won its agency Sledge the award for Best Brand Experience Campaign. The Metro Ski and Snowboard Show at Olympia won organiser DMG World Media an award for Most Improved Consumer Exhibition. And agency Sprout (pictured) won Best Use of a Blank Canvas Space for the launch of the Infiniti Europe luxury car brand during the 2008 Geneva Motor Show.

The venue awards went to The Brewery for Best Conference or Purpose Built Venue, Sony Colour Rooms for Unique Venue of the Year and the Sheepdrove Eco Conference Centre, which won the Green Award. London’s Royal Parks walked away with Venue In-house Events Team of the Year and Stage One won Supplier of the Year.

Ibiza Rocks

As exclusively revealed in my I'm with the b(r)and article for Media Week, Sony Ericsson is bringing the Balearics back to the UK this summer with four Ibiza Rocks parties. Now, here's the detail:

Agency Iris Experience has developed what I believe to be a unique advocacy driven ambassador programme. A competition has been launched via online music community Xtaster to invite budding promoters to submit their ideas on how they would host the ultimate Ibiza Rocks party. The winners will receive full support to bring alive their very own random rock-fest. Sony Ericsson will also challenge each winning host to capture the action on Sony Ericsson handsets.

Highlights from the parties will be seeded through a network of more than one million youngsters via mobile and online social networking sites, where the best party and content will be voted on. The party hostess with the most-ess will be rewarded with a trip to the Ibiza Rocks closing party with five mates.

Also, starting on 21 July, Channel 4 and its digital offering 4music will run weekly half hour long shows broadcasting footage of the gigs, behind the scenes interviews and action from the island. Iris Experience has also created a social network style microsite off-shoot and online seeding programme as part of the campaign's digital strategy. A digital input has seen the four-year-old Ibiza Rocks event brand come of age.