Last night I got along to the IAB awards with Grant, it was held at the Carriage Works in Sydney – which is kind of like Sydney’s lame version of Melbourne’s Fed Square. The omnipresent advertising awards MC, Adam Spencer, was host yet again, but made swift with the formalities, knowing that everyone really just wanted to get their gutful over at the bar.

Interestingly this was the first year that the IAB included specific categories around SEO/SEM, which saw Google & Yahoo! step up their presence as well as a hefty contingent from Facebook Australia supporting the social media marketing nominees. The actual production of the event was pretty slick with some lovely motion graphics pieces and rich video displayed on a massive HD wide screen. However, having to sit through about a dozen pre-roll style ads for each of the category sponsors prior to each award wasn’t so awesome.

VJ were nominated in the ‘Cross-Platform Integration’ category for our fantastic work on Army’s ‘Under A Rising Sun’, and were up against our friends at Droga5 and Publicis Mojo. Unfortunately we were pipped at the post and Mojo collected the gong for their Maxibon ‘Jawceps’ ice cream campaign.

Even though we didn’t win this time around, Army job enquiries via Rising Sun are through the roof and this was the key result we were looking for, and it’s great we are all being recognised by the industry and our peers for continuing to create amazingly impactful online campaigns.

The main award of the night was the Creative Showcase, which we took home last year for our Jay Jay’s ‘3D Dance Off’ spectacular. This was won by DDB Sydney for their ‘Making Tracks’ Tourism Australia social media driven campaign, which is a definitely a deserved winner.

White Agency won a few more awards for their Commonwealth Bank mobile app and Droga5 also picked up two more awards for their Cascade ‘Brewed by Feel’ iPhone app.

As you get older you learn very quickly about mitigating the heavy hangover the day after these sorts of events, so the three of us were all very mature and decided to smuggle out a few more Toohey’s Extra Drys and head home at midnight rather than out to the after-party over in the Cross.

All in all it was a fun night and further exposure for VJ’s awesomeness – particularly as this nomination went towards our current No.1 ranking. Congrats to every one awarded and all of the VJ team!