2009 July, 13th

Liliana Dumitru-Steffens

The Stevie Awards were created to honor and generate public recognition of the achievements and positive contributions of organizations and business people worldwide.

Stevie Awards are conferred in four programs: The American Business Awards, The International Business Awards, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Stevie is taken from the name Stephen, which is derived from the Greek for “crowned.”

This year the top 25% of all entries submitted are honored as Stevie Award winners or Finalists (honorable mention). Among these, and toped by Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, Calysto Communications has made it to the finals of the Public Relations Agency of the Year in North America.

Calysto’s presence among the honorees in this category (which also includes MWW Group and SmartMark Communications) deserves a celebration: competing against a global player like Waggener Edstrom Worldwide is not something many PR firms dare to attempt. It would make an interesting exercise to learn which campaign or set of campaigns convinced the judges that Waggener deserved the Stevie Award – every time a name like Waggener gets accolades competing against companies like Calysto, MWW Group or SmartMark Communication I always say to myself: “why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”

It’s unrealistic to expect a small company that handles only twenty clients to win against a company that handles thousand of clients worldwide. But for Calysto this is a well deserved accolade, a success – after all, there were over 1700 organizations and individuals in the competition:

“Calysto is unique among mid-sized North American public relations firms in that we have relationships with local PR professionals in more than 80 countries worldwide. These professionals know the local media, speak the language and understand the culture, which allows Calysto clients to deliver their marketing messages directly to media in almost any region across the globe,” said Laura Borgstede, Calysto’s founder and CEO. “It is an honor to be recognized by The 2009 International Business Awards for Calysto’s unique level of service to its clients.”

Honorees will be celebrated at the 6th annual International Business Awards banquet, this year at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City on Monday, 14 September.

• 2009/07/23 -- Twitter Contest for Marketers and PRs
• 2009/11/11 -- Geoforce Hires MWW as Agency of Record
• 2009/09/09 -- MWW Group Adds Laura Catalano
• 2009/06/02 -- Allot Communications Selects Calysto as Agency of Record

About the Author

Liliana Dumitru-Steffens is public relations consultant for Pamil Visions PR. She writes for Everything PR since January 2009. Previously she worked for My-tronic GmbH and Unilever Romania. Email Liliana at lsteffens [at] pamil-visions [dot] net.

See All Posts by This Author