West Coast Advertising Group Takes Top Honors for Web-based Marketing and Patient Education
Irvine, CA, Nov. 28, 2006 — Ignite Health, an independent marketing agency that specializes in medical advertising that focuses on the patient, has swept the annual awards scene by garnering seventeen honors in five separate competitions.
In one of them, the World Wide Web (WWW) Health Awards (www.healthawards.com), Ignite picked up nine trophies, including two "Best of Show" awards. The agency also won a Gold in the MM&M Awards (www.mmm-online.com), four Web Awards from the Web Marketing Association (www.webaward.org), two Silvers in the Davey Awards (www.daveyawards.com), and was a finalist in the International Health & Medical Media competition, known as the Freddie Awards (www.freddieawards.com).
Ignite competed against more than 1,000 entries for the WWW Health awards. An extension of the National Health Information Awards (NHIA), WWW is the largest program of its kind in the United States. Three of the awards were for Ignite's corporate website (www.ignitehealth.com). The site won "Best of Show" in the "Most Innovative" category, making this the fourth time that the agency has walked off with the title.
"Innovation is part of who we are," said Fabio Gratton, Ignite's co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer. "These awards recognize the importance of programs that break through the clutter, educating the patients and their caregivers while involving the professionals." The site, like much of Ignite's work, uses real patients who speak out about their experiences living with chronic conditions, such as diabetes, Hepatitis B, HIV, breast cancer and cataracts.
In addition, Ignite won four awards from WWW for its clients' websites, including one about eye surgery and several relating to diabetes.
Ignite's recently formed Incendia Health Studios, a company that develops disease education properties which pharmaceutical companies can sponsor, won a WWW gold award in the advertising/marketing category for a site using cartoons to explain complicated medical conditions (www.CartoonMD.com), and a Bronze Award in the Health Promotion/Disease & Injury Prevention category for its newly created Hepatitis B network (www.HepB.tv).
Incendia's Live With It website—the Web's first animated series about people living with HIV/AIDS—was granted a Gold in the MM&M Awards for its use of digital marketing to consumers.
Live With It also won a Silver Award in the Activism Website category at the annual International Davey Awards, which honor achievements that derive their strength from big ideas. A second Silver went to HepB.tv in the Health Website Category. The Davey Awards are judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts, an organization of top-tier professionals from acclaimed media, advertising, and marketing firms.
Top honors also went to Live With It (www.livewithit.com) for "Best Advocacy Website" in the Web Marketing Association's annual tribute to the sites that set the standards for Internet Marketing. Other Ignite winners in the WMA's were the agency's corporate site, named Most Outstanding; a site created for Amylin and Lilly (www.Byetta.com), which won the Pharmaceutical Standard of Excellence Award, and one for Eyeonics' Crystalens product (www.visionrealitycheck.com), which earned the award for Medical Standard of Excellence for a site showing how people without corrective lenses see the world.
The agency's corporate website was also a finalist in MediMedia's International Health & Medical Media Awards, known as the FREDDIES.
Ignite, which has won more than 100 industry awards since its founding in 2001, has more than 70 full-time employees. The agency's revenues have more than tripled over the last four years. Clients include: Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Bausch & Lomb, Cephalon, Eli Lilly and Co., Eyeonics, Genomic Health, Gilead Sciences, Merck Publishing, Novacea, Roche/Trimeris, Refractec, and Telik, Ignite Health is located at 8955 Research Drive, Irvine, CA 92618. Telephone: 949-861-3200; e-mail: triley@ignitehealth.com Web: www.ignitehealth.com.