Hailed as the "internet's highest honor" by the New York Times, the Webby Awards assess thousands of entries every year in an effort to recognize outstanding brands, initiatives, designs and individuals across the internet.

This year's awards garnered 11,000 entries from all 50 states and over 60 countries, with people in more than 200 countries voting online in the People's Voice awards.

The 2013 winners include special honors for music artist Frank Ocean, the Obama for America 2012 presidential campaign, and Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe, who spearheaded online activism in support of gay rights.

Brands taking home awards this year include Change.org, Google Maps and Glassdoor. brandchannel's parent company, Interbrand, was nominated in the Best Visual Design- Function category for its Best Global Brands 2012 website.

Here's how some other top brands made out this year:Continue reading...

Volkswagen Golf was in some pretty intriguing company at the New York International Auto Show with fellow winners of the World Car of the Year Awards: Porsche Boxster as Performance Car of the Year, Jaguar F-Type as Car Design of the Year and Tesla S as Green Car of the Year.

But Volkswagen executives were more excited about the prospects of the seventh-generation Golf in the US market than about the North American debut of Golf 7 winning the World Car of the Year designation. The New York Auto Show award recognized the Golf, VW's best-selling car worldwide, as the "car for everyman."

Yet in America, Golf—while it's been a workhorse for the Volkswagen brand for decades—isn't accorded nearly the respect that it is globally. Volkswagen has begun a major push toward higher sales volumes in the US, but it has achieved significant gains already with new versions of its three other primary cars: Passat, Jetta and the Beetle.Continue reading...

Welcome to the annual Brandcameo Product Placement Awards. Since 2001, Brandchannel has tracked product placement and brand appearances in every film that spent a weekend at the top of the U.S. box office. And every year since 2004 we have honored the good, the bad, and the ugly (and the most) product placement in the year's #1 films in tandem with the annual Oscars frenzy.

So without further ado: our 2013, 9th annual Brandcameo Product Placement Awards, covering films released in 2012. The envelope, please...

Continue reading...

Six tech stars have banded together to create the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, rewarding scientists “who think big, take risks and have made a significant impact on our lives,” said Anne Wojcicki, founder of genetics company 23andMe and married to Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google. 

Wojcicki along with Brin, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan, Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner and Art Levinson, chairman of Apple and former CEO of Genentech created the foundation in an effort to bring scientists and researchers to the forefront. “I think that our society needs more heroes who are scientists and researchers and engineers," said Zuckerberg. 

The foundation plans to reward five individuals or teams every year, however in its inaugural effort this year, 11 recipients were awarded the honor. 

The 11 scientists, most of them American, will each receive $3 million—more than twice the amount of a Nobel Prize—making it the world’s richest academic prize for medicine and biology.Continue reading...

Little do the stars know, by the time it comes to Oscars night, the most important performances are on the little screen, not the big one.

During the "Super Bowl of the entertainment industry" on Sunday evening, the ABC telecast of the Oscars, Hyundai and a handful of other advertisers will be leveraging the big stage in big ways for their brands. The prospect of the largest TV audience for the Academy Awards in several years would make achieving their goals easier.

Hyundai, for instance, will be running seven commercials during the telecast—the most of any advertiser—and it has the sole automotive rights to the automotive ad category during the show. Keeping with the show biz theme, it's fitting that Hyundai's voiceover talent is, once again, its longstanding brand voice: Academy Award-winner Jeff Bridges. At a time when Hyundai continues to dimensionalize the brand along both luxury and performance lines, the Oscars are at least as important a forum for the carmaker as for any actor or director.

"We're bullish on the chances for ratings this year, with the combination of films that were critically acclaimed and that also did big box office," Steve Shannon, CMO for Hyundai of America, told brandchannel. "We just like the feel of the Oscars."Continue reading...

This year, the 85th Academy Awards takes on a new name with a younger tone, "The Oscars."

"We're rebranding it," Oscars co-producer Neil Meron told The Wrap. "We're not calling it 'the 85th annual Academy Awards,' which keeps it mired somewhat in a musty way. It's called 'The Oscars.'"

Still pursuing a younger demographic despite the failure of James Franco and Anne Hathaway as co-hosts in 2011, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences publicist Teni Melidonian said, "It is right for this show, but we could easily go back to using 'Academy Awards' next year."

"It'll be like the Grammys,” Meron added. “The Grammys don't get a number, and neither will the Oscars." The awards show hit a ratings high of 55 million in 1998, the year of Titanic, but have been on a decline ever since.Continue reading...

Apple's top designer Sir Jonathan Ive grew up in England watching Blue Peter, the BBC series that moved last year from BBC One to the CBBC kids diginet and still holds the title of the world's longest-running kids' TV program.

Ive was was recently paid a visit by show presenter Barney at Apple HQ in Cupertino, Calif., during which he judged a viewer design contest and received a gold Blue Peter badge, which judging by his reaction may have been a bigger thrill than being elevated to a Knight of the British Empire by the Queen.

Watch below, with a hat-tip to The Unofficial Apple Weblog for spotting this gem.Continue reading...

It’s getting harder and harder to get television viewers to actually sit and watch commercials, which means product placement continues to rise as a means to show consumers just how great a product is.

TV will be filled with awards shows for the next few months, live events often attract high tune-in, sprinkled with tune-out during commercial breaks. 

PepsiCo's Aquafina brand is partnering with fashion TV powerhouse Project Runway (which jumped from Bravo to Lifetime TV in 2009) with a contest inviting aspiring designers to submit their designs for a chance to attend the season 11 finale at the Fall 2013 Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York next month.

According to the press release, "Narrowed down from the pool of design submissions gathered over the past month, the four designers who receive the most votes will compete in a one-hour, live design competition in New York City on February 6, 2013. The grand prize winner will receive $5,000, Aquafina for a year and recognition among the esteemed Project Runway and fashion communities."Continue reading...