LAVIDGE earns 5 ADDY awards
LAVIDGE, a Phoenix-based unified agency offering advertising, public relations and digital marketing services earned five awards at the 2019 Phoenix ADDY Awards including four Gold awards and one Silver.
LAVIDGE earned ADDY awards for clients across several categories: Arizona Public Service was recognized with a Gold award for a memorial ad dedicated to the late John McCain, and a Silver award for a tribute ad commemorating Flagstaff, Arizona’s contribution to NASA’s space program and the moon landing. Arizona Commerce Authority took home a Gold award for an old-school-style invitation to a new city-of-the-future project and Delta Dental earned a Gold award for a B2B animation-focused video mailer.
LAVIDGE also won a Gold award for its own “Work Smart” mural illustration that is featured in one of the agency’s conference rooms.
Held recently at the Phoenix Art Museum, The Phoenix ADDY awards event is the first of a three-tier juried competition. Once an ADDY is won at the local level, winners compete at a regional competition and then go on to the final, national show. The mission of the ADDY’s is to recognize and reward the creative spirit of excellence in the art of advertising.
It takes more than creativity alone to win advertising competitions. “I’m very proud of the work that has been created for our clients,” said Bob Case, chief creative officer at LAVIDGE. “Our goal, always, is to create strategically sound work that drives results for our clients – compelling, creative and beautifully executed work that consumers respond to.”
Plexus expands to Australia
Plexus Worldwide, a leading direct-selling health and happiness company, celebrated its upcoming expansion into the Australia market with a day of events at the Scottsdale headquarters.
On March 21, the Plexus building in the Pima Center was decked out in Australia-themed flags and signage covering windows, elevators and lobby doors. Green and gold balloons filled hallways with the national colors of Australia, while employees displayed their pride with matching shirts. To help team members celebrate, Plexus gave them an afternoon of fun with Australian games, a Plexus Kangaroo mascot, photo booth and plenty of Instagram-ready surfboards and beach balls.
This local celebration sets the stage as Plexus prepares to launch in Australia with a festive event in Perth on April 6. The event will feature Plexus founders, Tarl Robinson and Alec Clark, along with several members of the executive team including Sinéad Pollock, General Manager of Australia for Plexus.
“We are thrilled to bring Plexus to Australia where we believe we can help families with high quality products that will help them feel better than ever and live happy lives,” said Tarl Robinson, Plexus CEO and Founder. “As one of the world’s leading health and wellness companies that consistently ranks on the top global lists, it only makes sense to expand into the Australian market.”
“All across Australia, there is a huge focus to get healthy and stay healthy,” said Sinéad Pollock, General Manager of Australia. “Our Australian Ambassadors and the Plexus team has already started spreading the word about Plexus’ science-based health and wellness products, and we have customers who can’t wait for the April launch.”
Plexus selected Australia for expansion due to its large population of 25 million, competitive and open economy, and demand for new products in the health and beauty space. It comes less than one year after Plexus launched its first international operations in Canada.
Javelina expands to Denver
Javelina (pronounced hav-a-leena), the transformative Phoenix-based company behind some of Arizona’s most historic progressive wins, is expanding to Denver, Colorado. The expansion is led by Rob DuRay, Vice President of the Colorado Office, a professional with 14 years of experience crafting bold strategies to engage constituents and decision-makers to make a difference.
Javelina co-founders Catherine Alonzo, Bill Scheel and David Waid started the firm in 2012 as a political consulting and direct mail agency. Today, the team of eleven (and growing) passionate change engineers work with businesses, nonprofits, and campaigns to create meaningful change in local communities by marrying together cutting edge strategies from the worlds of marketing and advocacy. Services include: development of organizational mission and message, digital and traditional communications, field and grassroots outreach, direct mail, and political campaign coordination and fundraising.
Harnessing their expertise in powerful storytelling and effective advocacy strategies, Javelina’s clients have advanced programs that create safer, healthier communities, passed ballot measures raising crucial money for schools and education, and elected leaders at every level to champion these same issues and more. Javelina led Proposition 206, an initiative to introduce earned sick pay and increase the minimum wage, to a double point victory in 2016.
Report: Verizon offers fastest network in Phoenix
Verizon offers its customers the best consistent quality network in Phoenix according to new research from Tutela, with 86.2% of network tests for the operator meeting or exceeding Tutela’s excellent consistent quality threshold – a set of measurements designed to represent how often a network is good enough for high-intensity applications such as 1080p video streaming or reliable group video calling. Verizon customers also experienced the fastest average download speed at 22.4 Mbps.
The report, published by Tutela, the world’s largest crowdsourced network measurement company, investigated network performance of all major operators across the 10 largest cities in America, using over 2.5 billion measurements.
Other key findings for Phoenix include:
• Google Fi placed second overall for excellent consistent quality, with a score of 82.8%, while T-Mobile placed third at 81.1%. This was despite AT&T beating both networks on average download speed at 18.4 Mbps, compared to 10.9 Mbps for Google Fi and 10.7 Mbps for T-Mobile.
• Phoenix was in the bottom half of cities in terms of average data use per user per day, with an average daily consumption of 162 MB. This was significantly less than the average for Philadelphia (202 MB) and Houston (226 MB), the two most comparable cities by population size.
Tom Luke, VP at Tutela, commented: “While as a whole, network quality across US cities is impressively high, our report highlights the discrepancies between different providers, even in the same city. As we move towards 5G, the pressure will be on for operators to ensure that new network deployments actually boost average users’ quality of experience on the network across a range of quality metrics,not just the maximum potential speed.”
